Evanescent
by Lord Zeuss
Summary: Six months after the destruction of the Star Forge, Revan, under the increasing burden of his returning memories, realizes he must leave. As he and his wife Bastila set off into the unknown, they are stalked by an old, forgotten adversary.
1. Chapter 1

**Part 1**

_"This is not my life; this is not our life. Every day I die. This is not my life."_

--------------------------------

Bastila awoke covered in cold sweat, panting with dread, with terror; crying in shame. Outside her bedroom, the wilderness of Dantooine was still gripped firmly in the night's clutches, the cold light of the moon shining through the window and falling over her and her husband Calum, who lay asleep beside her. She wondered if he was sleeping peacefully, or if, like her, he was the helpless prisoner of a terrible memory.

The simple house around her was a way's off from the wreckage of the Jedi Academy. She and Calum wanted nothing more to do with the Jedi, and had bought the house from one Ahlan Matale, who had once used it as a personal retreat. Now she and Calum lived in blissful isolation, no more obligations, strangling duties, or calls to selfless sacrifice by the Jedi, the Republic, or anything.

It had been six months since the destruction of the Star Forge, six months of such simple joy being with the man she loved and being allowed to express their feelings toward one another. There was no more Jedi Code telling her she had no right to the yearnings of her heart, no more Masters whispering constantly in her ear to sacrifice what she had, what she'd worked and striven for, to a greater good that only grew ever distant. There was no more Malak.

But as heavenly as the isolation was, despite the breathtaking beauty of the wilderness in which she and Calum now lived, natural wonders she had never taken the time to appreciate in her endless quest to sacrifice in order to help others, despite all joys she and her new husband could share with each other, there was no escaping the things she'd done. Night was the longest time of the day. Each night, after a magical time in the sun where nothing seemed to matter but her and Calum, the memories would return with a vengeance that left her like she was now; terrified, helplessly ashamed, and relieved at the same time.

Calum's love for her, and hers for him, had brought her back from the brink of madness on the Star Forge, but she could never forget what she'd done to him. Every cruel word, vile promise, and despicable deed played over in her head as she slept, interposed in her nightmares by the shadow of pain from Malak's unrelenting torture. She couldn't try to tell herself that he'd just driven her mad, that he'd infected her with some otherworldly presence that dissolved her ability to think; she'd made the conscious choice to submit to him. She was responsible for her own actions.

Memories of the unspeakable horrors inflicted on her by Malak constricted her throat with the recollection of the unendurable agony, and only made her feel worse for everything she'd done for that man. She would have done anything for Malak to spare herself that pain again, and the things she'd done made her sick to her stomach.

When Calum confronted her at the pinnacle of the temple on Lehon, she spat his concern for her back into his face, she made him responsible for what had happened to her, scorned his confession of love for her. And then she tried to kill him. She tried with everything she had--or at least, she thought she did. She knew he was holding back, that he couldn't bring himself to commit to the unthinkable, and that only enraged her more. She would have preferred death by his hands than having to face Malak again, but at the same time, she recognized, deep within herself, that there was no way she could kill him.

When they met again on the Star Forge, he refused to fight her. Calum told her that she alone had the choice, whether she would continue to be the slave to Darth Malak and live a life of crippling fear broken only by bouts of unimaginable suffering, or if she would take her own life back, wholly and fully, and reject the path of misery and suffering before her. He begged her to cast off the chains she had put around herself. He forced her to see with clarity, for the first time in her entire life, that it was not evil to wish for happiness for herself.

Bastila's tears ran fresh at that memory. She watched Calum beside her, watched his chest rise and fall rhythmically with each breath, and sobbed into her pillow.

* * *

Even in the depths of dreamless slumber, Calum could sense the disturbance. Groping forward, like pushing against a wall of cobwebs, he reached for the surface of his consciousness and broke through into wakefulness. He could tell without even opening his eyes that it was still hours before dawn. The bed was warm around him, the comforting folds of the blankets beckoning him to return to sweet oblivion, especially considering the cool air in the room making a strong case for staying within the warmth provided by the soft bedding and the person next to him.

She wasn't asleep. From the way the mattress felt under him, Calum could tell Bastila was awake and sitting up. He opened his eyes and, resisting the alluring temptation of settling back down and returning to sleep, raised his body off the bed, sitting up next to his wife. In the effervescent sparkle of the moon and starlight, he was struck yet again by how beautiful she was with her dark hair freed from its tight updo and falling all around her angelic face.

That perfect face was stained by tears in the moonlight.

He didn't know exactly what had her so upset - though it was not hard for him to guess - but it didn't matter to him, only comforting her did. Circling an arm around her, he pulled her close to him and laid her head on his shoulder, sheltering her, letting her cry against him. She eagerly clutched to him.

"Oh, Calum, I'm so sorry," she cried quietly.

"Shh," he soothed. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

"I'm sorry," she sobbed again.

"Hush, it's okay." He held her tightly as she kept crying. He knew this wasn't simply agony over what she'd done to him--even though she may have thought it. That was merely the catalyst. No, this was a lifetime of heartbreak and suppressed feelings coming to the surface and exorcising itself. Her brief life before the Jedi had been one of constant travel, homes uprooted one after another, with one parent too busy with his own quest for glory and the other choosing, instead of showing her daughter motherly love in spite of the hardship, to send her away to "a better life".

Under the Jedi, things had been little different for her, emotionally. Bastila had spent the most part of her life with no other choice than to turn inward for comfort while those around her told her she had no right to want comfort. Now, that was all coming out.

For the longest time he simply held her, letting her cry herself out until she fell asleep in his arms.

As he lay back down, Calum found that he no longer felt like sleeping. Lying awake, he thought about his decision to leave the Jedi Order with Bastila, thought about marrying her. He had no regrets. There was simply no way he or Bastila could have continued on in the Order, forbidden to love each other by the foundational doctrines of the Jedi. Returning from the Star Forge, love was all he and Bastila had left. Without each other, neither could cope with the things they'd done.

At least Bastila had not killed anyone, but even still the memory of the things she'd done to him tormented her. Calum's former actions had known no such restraint or limit, and day by day, night by night, they crystallized ever clearer in his mind. Memories of things that made him sick returned to him, often in uncontrollable storms, flashing through his mind as if to say that they were there and would never leave him alone.

The Jedi had counted on this, banking everything on the hope that his memories could be sifted for answers to the dilemma they were facing, information that would help them locate the Star Forge so it could be destroyed and the scales again tipped in their favor.

Most of his memories had nothing to do with the Star Forge.

It seemed they had given no thought as to what their plan would do to him as a person. He would never have wished to have back the things he saw, but it was seen by the Jedi Masters as a necessary sacrifice. They were prepared to torture him - body, mind, and soul - if that was what it took for him to lead them to the Star Forge. They had succeeded, and now that their task for him was done, they had no further use for him. His purpose was fulfilled, but the storm of his emergent past continued to rage unabated.

He was no longer allowed to simply be Calum Jan, a colonial draftee into the Republic Army. He now had to be both the Jedi Revan and Darth Revan as well, had to hold himself to the moral standards of the Jedi while living with the ever-increasing recollection of the horrors he'd been party to as the Lord Darth--a man who still lurked in his mind.

Calum realized he was shaking. Not wanting to wake Bastila, he slipped out of bed and absently pulled on his pants as he went to the single window to stare out into the nightside wilderness.

The memories flashed by faster than he could follow, impervious to his feeble attempts to stop what could not be stopped. He was inundated by horror and revulsion at everything he saw. Pressing his palms to his face could not block out the images that assaulted him from within, forcing themselves into his consciousness in no particular order or pattern.

_He walked with Malak through the halls of the Star Forge, feeling the power of hatred echoing past them..._

_Expectant faces looked at him, as if he were able to single-handedly halt the onrushing thousands of the Mandalorian army. All he could do was tell them the truth; that likely none of them would survive..._

_A camp littered with dead, smoking corpses met his eyes. They had not died by the Mandalorians, but by a weapon of their own design gone out of control..._

_Sith torturers worked their brutal profession on a Jedi Knight while he stalked in the shadows, observing the obscene proceedings..._

_Warm blood splashed his face, he couldn't tell which of the dying traitors it had come from..._

_He had given the order, the world below would burn..._

A hissing cry escaped his throat as Calum clenched his fists against the horror. The images were too intense, too real--they always were. Tears of futility dampened his hands. How was he expected to live like this?

Grimly, he reminded himself that perhaps he deserved it all, that the mercy of the Jedi might have been the worst possible punishment for him, for the things he'd done.

But whether by accident or design, he was a different person now, they'd _made_ him into a different person. The man named Calum Jan was being made to suffer for Revan's sins, and the Jedi didn't care. After all, it was by their mercy that he was not executed for those crimes.

It was senseless!

Crying in silence by the window, Calum didn't notice Bastila getting up and approaching him softly until he felt her hand on his shoulder. He grasped at that hand like a lifeline, and felt the pressure of her squeeze in reply like a gift of inner strength. Drawing close to him, she laid her head against his neck to let him know he wasn't alone.

Eagerly, desperately, he clutched at her presence as the only thing able to make the shadows flee from his mind. She completed him, her love and her presence made everything better, brightened his world even at the darkest of times. She made the cold truth of reality bearable.

He couldn't imagine how he'd managed in life without her.

It was a while later when Calum realized he'd stopped crying. All the time, Bastila never said anything, just held him as he'd done for her. No words were necessary for either of them to understand the pain they both went through during the night.

He managed a small smile for her.

"The visions again?" she asked in a voice just barely above a whisper.

Calum nodded, not trusting his voice to speak.

"Come," she whispered, "you should get some sleep."

* * *

_He walked among thousands of white figures, feeling a cold mask over his face. The teeming masses around him looked identical to one another, and he realized he must have fit right in, without a distinguishing feature to tell him apart from those surrounding him. He was not a person, just a faceless fragment of the greater whole, a soulless drone._

_At once, the thousands in the square dropped to their knees and touched the foreheads of their featureless white masks to the ground. He followed out of instinct, knowing failure to conform to the whole was a crime that would bring about his swift death. Words were chanted that he could not understand, and everyone lifted their heads in unison to behold a figure who stood before them on a balcony overlooking the square._

_When he looked up, all he could see was the death scream of a planet full of life, a world torn apart with thundering violence. He felt the very fabric of life tearing around him, pain reverberating through the Force itself. There was an echo, traveling the rim of the galaxy, extinguishing life as it passed and remained in perpetuity, an endless death._

_His eyes were blinded by a harsh flash of light reflecting off a polished silver hull. He saw giant ships passing through the dead space. Thousands upon thousands of them. They filled the skies of a hundred worlds, their fury reduced cities to ash, hills to glass, and they brought forth millions of white, faceless soldiers to enslave those who survived._

_He saw them assemble innocent civilians into lines that stretched from horizon to horizon and execute them by the hundreds of thousands. With each death, he felt the Force grow weaker._

_High in the sky, the sun was fierce as it shone down on the killing fields. He turned his eyes toward it, preferring blindness to the sight of so much innocent blood._

Calum flinched at the morning light in his eyes that pulled him from his dreamworld. It shone with rebellious irreverence into him and Bastila's bedroom, a stern ray shining straight in his face. The light was a welcome relief from the troubles of the night.

Her head nestled in the crook of his shoulder and neck, Bastila awoke from her light sleep when Calum put up a hand to block the harsh sunlight from his sleep-fogged eyes. She yawned slightly, cast a glance out the window.

"Beautiful morning," she muttered into Calum's ear.

He smiled a little. "Yes, it is. It came right on schedule."

She kissed him lightly on the cheek. "It always does, Calum."

He was grateful for the sun's timeliness, every morning it helped pull him out of his constant nighttime misery. In morning's light it was easier to forget everything he remembered, or thought he did, about Darth Revan and who he knew he really was. The light helped him forget, but only Bastila could help him understand.

As he lay in bed beside his wife, Calum started to realize what he had to do.

"Bastila," he whispered. "I have to leave."

* * *

In shock, Bastila sat up in the bed and gaped at her husband. She knew the returning memories of his past life had been bringing him pain she could only taste and never fully appreciate, but she'd never considered it might take him from her. She couldn't imagine him leaving, shivered at the very thought.

A feeble "Why?" was all she could manage at first.

By his pained expression, she knew it was just as hard, if not harder, for him to say it as it was for her to hear him saying it. Calum sighed deeply as he laid his head back on the pillow

"Please don't think this means I don't love you. I do, Bastila, always. And if I thought I could find a reason to believe I'm mistaken, I wouldn't ask this of you."

Swallowing, Bastila regained control over her voice. "Just tell me, Calum."

He closed his eyes and put a hand to his temples. "It used to only be Revan that caused me grief. The Force knows everything I remember I want to forget, and it seems every new memory is only more horrible and terrifying than the last.

"I hate remembering those things. But I do realize that they are a part of me, and only if I can come to terms with them will I ever be able to find true peace. So, in a way, I am glad to receive them even for all the misery those memories cause me. And more than anything, you make it possible for me live with myself. If I didn't have you, I might not be able to deal with the things I see in my dreams."

Bastila blinked back a tear as Calum continued.

"The past two weeks have been different for me, Bastila. It's not just Revan anymore; I have visions I can't understand but that I somehow know are connected to what's happening to me. It's getting harder for me to separate my dreams and visions from reality, and I'm being overwhelmed with an inexplicable sense of comprehension without understanding.

"I see people without faces dressed in white, bowing by the millions under willing slavery, and those same teeming numbers pouring forth to exterminate the Force. This vision is connected to me in ways I can't fathom but Revan understood. He's trying to tell me something, trying to claw his way out from the veil in my mind he was sealed behind, and everything he shows me only gets more intense.

"I don't have the answer to what's happening to me, and Revan can't give it to me. All his attempts have done is drive me further into a misery that drags you down with it. So I have to seek the answer on my own. I can't keep inflicting my troubles on you and Juhani. It's unfair to both of you.

"Somewhere out there is an answer, the truth behind the lies. I have to find it or I will die. And I can't take anyone with me, or they will share in my fate. Bastila, I can't do that to you; I have to know you'll be here, alive and waiting for me when I can return. You're the only thing that lets me continue on."

Bastila sat still for a moment, absorbing Calum's words. She was quite a while in forming her response.

"Calum, I know how hard it can be for you at night. I know only a fraction of the pain your memories must cause you, and the strength you must have to deal with them." She leaned down on the bed to touch her hand to Calum's face. "Both we both know that neither of us can muster the will to continue but from the other. Calum, that's why we married; because we knew neither could live without the other."

"But Bastila, I can't--" She put a finger to his lips when he tried to protest.

"Calum, don't ever say that you bring your troubles on me. You don't. It is because of you I was saved from the Dark Side, and because of your forgiveness I can live with the things I've done. And if anyone has brought troubles on someone, it is I who have done so, because I alone bear responsibility for burying your mind. I know you've forgiven me, but I will never forgive myself for what we did to you.

"I owe you, Calum. You do not owe me. I will not leave your side."

"But if something happens to me," Calum whispered, "I have to know you're safe."

"I can think of no place I could be safer, than with you." She slid back on the bed to lie beside him, grasped his hand. "Maybe we'll let Juhani come with us. She would make sure of it."

A smile came to Calum's face. "Besides," he said, "even I don't let her, she'll follow me anyway."

Bastila giggled at the thought. She certainly would.

Juhani had followed them for days after their honeymoon, so she would be around to protect the both of them. Three days into their solitude on the plains of Dantooine, the Cathar was forced to reveal herself to them when she caught and killed three Sith assassins in their home. Calum had been speechless with gratitude, and Bastila invited her to stay with them. Juhani had kept them company ever since.

"I'm sorry, Bastila, you're right. I honestly don't know what I'd do without you."

He kissed her then; passionately, desperately. She sighed against the feel of his lips, his warm body pressed against hers.

There would be time to leave later. But for a few minutes neither of them worried about what lay ahead. For a few minutes they had each other, and that was all that mattered.

--------------------------------

**End Part 1**

**

* * *

**The quote at the beginning is taken from the Demon Hunter song "Summer Of Darkness".


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2**

_"The thing that scares me most is the fear I see in others. And the thing that really frightens me to the core is when I see that fear in you. That look that sent shivers down my spine will haunt me until the end of living days and nights..."_

--------------------------------

A light breeze set the plains' golden grasses swaying back and forth as if an invisible sea tide were washing over the rolling vista, breaking upon the blunt face of the breathtaking mountain range that spanned the northern horizon. From the front seat of an open-cockpit landspeeder, Calum savored the view as he guided the gently hovering vehicle over the sweeping grasslands, the wind playing slightly across his face and blowing back his black mid-length hair.

In the seat beside him, Bastila leaned over and gave him a light kiss on the cheek. Juhani sat behind them, slightly agitated because she had to rely on Calum to do the driving. The Cathar relaxed slightly when she saw them entering familiar territory.

They'd left the wilderness home late in the morning to head back to what remained of the Jedi enclave and its tiny dependent settlement. Calum's first reasoning had been the most obvious; their only ship, the _Ebon Hawk_, was still docked at the settlement, just outside the boundaries of the Jedi grounds. Certainly none of them were going anywhere without a ship.

The second reason had been Bastila.

Earlier, after the both of them were fully awake and had put the emotional agonies of the previous night behind them, Bastila asked Calum if she could first speak with the two remaining Jedi Masters of the Council of Dantooine.

"The Force is in all of us, and it can sometimes work in strange ways, ways we may not even understand," she'd said. "There is something at work within you that neither of us understands, and I'm afraid that I have somehow been a part of it. I have to know if I somehow caused this, if perhaps your burning need for an elusive answer is connected to what I did to you. Calum, I love you, please understand that. But I'm afraid my love might be what is driving you further into the darkness, the same as it did me."

He knew to what she referred by that statement, and the memory set his heart pounding afresh. He remembered all too well the things she'd done for Malak, her heartless betrayal and sneeringly contemptuous treatment of him and the rest of her former friends. He also remembered that heartbreaking moment on the Star Forge when she'd begged him, if he loved her at all, to kill her for what she'd done. In the end, the only thing that had saved her was her love for him.

Calum's mind could not reconcile what she said to him. Love was what brought her back, not what doomed her.

"If I may, I would like to ask the Masters for guidance before we leave," she asked of him, and he couldn't possibly refuse her. But he worried about Vrook and Vandar, the two Masters she would see.

When he'd married Calum and Bastila on the bridge of his new ship, Commodore Onasi had sworn himself and his whole bridge crew into secrecy, vowing never to divulge what had transpired between the two Jedi. Calum knew from his experiences with him that Onasi was an honorable man who would keep his word. But he and Bastila had, for all intents and purposes, been missing for over six months. They told no one in the Jedi Order where they were going - not even Juhani, though she found them anyway - and had all but dropped off the face of the galaxy.

Even if they knew not of their marriage, the two Masters had doubtlessly realized that _something_ had happened to the both of them. Calum worried what they might do, but he yielded to Bastila's insistence that she would be fine. The Masters were friends, not enemies. They had, after all, given him a second chance rather than kill him when they had the opportunity before them.

Although, after the nights he'd been having recently, Calum was no longer sure he was grateful for their second chance.

But his misgivings and apprehension hadn't done away with reality, and reality, in the form of the forbidding ruins of the Academy buildings, stared him in the face as he brought the landspeeder to a halt in what had once been a magnificent garden. He shut off the speeder's engine and the three sat in silence for a moment, regarding the lifeless ruins about them.

"Bastila, are you sure the Masters are even still here?" Juhani asked.

"Yes. They would not have abandoned the enclave, no matter what had happened. Can you even imagine the things of value that would be lost forever if these runs were not protected from foolish intruders?" Bastila climbed out of her seat and set foot on the ground, her feet crushing the petals of flowers long dead and withered. "Just a single lightsabre crystal in the wrong hands could cause a deadly accident, to say nothing of some of the more dangerous objects kept in the Archives or the Masters' chambers. But even more important are those priceless documents that may have survived the attack. The surviving Masters would not leave things of such incalculable value unguarded."

After her, Calum and Juhani clambered from the landspeeder. Juhani's eyes moistened as she bent to the ground and picked up the fragile body of a dead and dry fireblossom, a majestic orange flower that had once grown in wide patches around the enclave. They held special meaning for her, as she'd adored them as a child and Calum had brought some to her in the grove as a peace offering.

Calum grasped Bastila's hand. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked.

She answered with a firm, "Yes."

"I'll come with you, Bastila. If I know Vrook at all, and I think I do, he will not be in the least bit understanding. He'll see only that you fell under Malak's... under Malak's _influence_. You should have someone with you who's on your side."

"No, Calum, I have to go alone. I'm not afraid of anything happening to me. Vandar is one of the gentlest and fairest Masters I have ever known. He would not unjustly punish me when he knows I have suffered my due and redeemed myself by coming back to the Light." She said the words with such conviction. Calum wished she could convince him as firmly as she herself believed in her words.

"I know how you feel about Vrook. I felt the same way for many years, Calum. But he is only trying to do what is best for the Jedi and for the galaxy. I trust his wisdom."

"But they don't understand what happened to the two of us," Calum protested. He was frustrated with himself for not being able to adequately convey his conflicted thoughts and feelings. It was like reaching for the water before him to find it was only a mirage on a hot road; here a minute, gone the next.

As only she could do, Bastila seemed to better understand his thoughts than he did himself. Putting her hands to the sides of his head, she looked him straight in the eyes, her gray irises searing through the fog of confusion in his mind.

"Calum, the Jedi Masters are not going to take me away from you. I'll not let them. They may not like what they see as me straying from the path of the Jedi, but this is who we are now. I gave up life in the Jedi Order to be with you, and I won't turn back on my oath to you. 'Till death do us part.' Remember?"

Unable to find words to answer her, Calum hugged her instead. "I love you," he whispered. He thought it unfair that those were the only words with which he could express his devotion. They seemed woefully inadequate.

"I love you, Calum," she whispered back. "Trust me, it will be alright. I promise."

As desperately as he wanted to believe her, believe that everything was going to be alright, the moment she pulled away and started down the forbidding hall that led into the bowels of the ruined academy, Calum was struck by the horrible feeling that he would never see her again.

* * *

The Sith bombardment had not been kind to the Jedi enclave. Many of the rooms and hallways were unrecognizable; gutted from the merciless weapon blasts much of the buildings were in a state of near-collapse, holding a precarious solidity on the brink of utter ruin. The glow of the setting sun shone through the ragged holes in the ceiling, painting fiery orange streaks in the airborne dust that filled the broken hall as it was stirred up by Bastila's passing.

A profound sense of tragedy reverberated off the shattered walls around her. When Bastila thought of the six blissful months she'd spent away with Calum, in the face of the terrible things that had happened to the enclave, she felt like she'd betrayed everyone who'd died here. In truth, leaving the Jedi Order to marry Calum had had more of an effect on her than she could ever let him know. The Order had been her whole life, and to suddenly give it up was a jolting and profoundly saddening experience.

But then, she'd never really gone back to the Jedi after falling to the Dark Side. She came back for Calum and no one else. It had just taken her some time to realize how much the Jedi were still a part of her. She couldn't let go of them completely, not just yet. And right now, she needed their guidance more than ever.

Recently, her and Calum's blessed isolation had become a trying ordeal for both of them. As she had gradually begun to come to terms with herself and the terrible things she'd done, Calum's mind grew worse. The shadowed persona of Darth Revan, buried in his mind, was steadily being dredged up by his subconscious, and with it the even more baffling knowledge of a looming greater evil that cast everything she thought she knew about his dark identity into doubt.

Bastila had always accepted that Revan fell to the Dark Side during the Mandalorian wars and turned from savior to conquerer in a dark lust for domination. It was the way of the Sith, to crave ever greater power until they were so blinded by their selfish desires that every measure was justified in the pursuit of that power. But the more she learned about Revan, the more unclear the picture became. The shadow of an overarching scheme revealed itself piece by piece, never completely clear but substantial enough to disprove her previous assumptions.

The most unsettling thing was that she was sure the Council must have known, and yet they had not told her, nor anyone. Bastila wondered if she dared let Calum act on the flashes and fragments he saw in his mind. She needed to know if there was something there, lurking in the shadows of his mind, that had been kept from her; or if it was something she had helped the Council put there, inadvertently creating a shadow with no source.

Masters Vrook and Vandar were where she expected them to be, sitting cross-legged in meditation in the middle of what had once been the Council Chamber.

Bastila bowed to them.

"Good to see you again, it is, Padawan Bastila" Vandar greeted her.

"So you return at last," Vrook said in an accusatory tone. "I trust you have seen the terrible destruction that has befallen this enclave? Do you need any more evidence of the horrors you have helped inflict on the Jedi Order? That you would have the arrogance to hide from justice for as long as you have and then return here, where your treachery cost the lives of hundreds of Jedi, proves the dark taint of Darth Revan has taken you over."

In times past, when confronted with Vrook's displeasure as she presently was, Bastila would have cringed and wished for the floor to swallow her. But she'd been expecting his sour indignation and prepared herself against it. Even so, his words struck a sensitive nerve in her.

Standing straight and tall, Bastila did not submit to his unjust accusations, her assessment of him lowering. "What I did under the influence of the Sith and Darth Malak was done to those who have already forgiven me, Master Vrook. I was not the one who betrayed the Academy here on Dantooine, you know the truth of that. Malak was once a student here, and had always known of the enclave. It needed no betraying.

"And if, after what I sacrificed to stop the Sith and save the Republic, you wish still to punish me for betraying the Republic, I can assure you that there is no greater pain you could inflict on me than the knowledge I must live with for the rest of my life." Bastila blinked back a tear, remembering Calum's shock at seeing her on the pinnacle of the Rakatan temple.

"You think we can trust anything you say or do, Bastila? After proving that the Dark Side has taken your soul?" Vrook's tone was openly condemning. "You may say whatever words you wish, but once you put the crown of a liar on your head, never can you truly be rid of its terrible stain."

"Can you not sense her sincerity, Vrook?" Vandar intervened on Bastila's behalf. "Come back to the Light, Bastila has, and you do not see?"

"She clouds her thoughts with a torrent of emotion," Vrook protested. "She has _somehow_ forgotten the most fundamental principle on which our order stands; 'There is no emotion, there is peace.'"

"If to punish her our intent was, we would not have let her leave after the Star Forge. You agreed with the rest of us that already given her punishment was."

"Very well, then."

"Esteemed Masters," Bastila said, drawing their attention back to her, "I have come to you because there is something I must know, something that I believe may concern the safety of the galaxy."

"Speak," Vandar bid her, "we will answer what we can."

"When the Republic came under attack by the Mandalorians, the Jedi Order did not come to its aid. Why?"

Vrook sighed, greatly annoyed and not loathe to show it. "Have you been asleep for the past three and a half years? Did you not see the destruction and death wrought by those who disobeyed us? The war consumed all those Jedi, and those it did not manage to kill it turned to the Dark Side. That is the nature of any war, and that is why the Jedi are not to fight such battles. Had the entire Order thrown themselves into the abyss the galaxy would have forever fallen under the shadow of the Sith."

Bastila nodded in agreement, crossing her arms. "Yes, that is what you've told us for all these years. And I believed, along with all the others, that it was within the highest calling of the Jedi Code to do as you did. Of late, however, I find myself increasingly unsatisfied with that explanation. You would not have made such a momentous decision on such vague grounds. Surely there is more to your reasoning than you have disclosed. Else, perhaps I overestimated how much wisdom you truly possess."

"You dare..." Vrook began menacingly before Vandar cut him off.

"You are correct, Bastila. Another reason there was, at the heart of the matter. Reveal it to others we could not, for a vision of prophecy it was."

"Prophecy is not meant for the unlearned," Bastila recited out of rote, understanding.

Vandar nodded.

"Long before the Mandalore wars began, the Council was confronted with a prophecy that one of our Order would go off to war and become a tyrannical Sith who would go on to rule the galaxy, the Republic and the Jedi Order itself under his fist," Vrook explained. "We soon saw the Mandalorian conflict as the war warned of by the prophecy, and knew we could not allow the Jedi to fight that war."

Bastila still felt they were withholding their true motives from her. "Tell me the prophecy."

Vrook frowned as unpleasantly as he ever had. "It is not for your ears to know, Padawan."

"I am ashamed, Master Vrook, that the day has then come that I can no longer trust the Jedi Masters to give me truth, only rationalized lies and vague allusions." She truly was disgusted; the price of their actions, good or bad, had been paid in blood and they still would not tell her why.

Vrook glared at her, she glared back.

"If willing to hear the truth she is, then hear the prophecy she should," Vandar argued.

Vrook immediately tried to protest. "Master Vandar...!"

"Concern her, this does, Vrook," Vandar said firmly.

"If you so insist then," Vrook grumbled. "The prophecy. Open your mind, Padawan Bastila."

He waved his hand and suddenly words exploded into Bastila's mind:

_The war hero of the Jedi will save his people from the hordes of honor and turn himself to break upon the jaw of the ravenous Destroyers and the founding Forge. Should he seek a path out of destruction, he will lead those who follow into the darkness, and return to seize all rule of Government and Order._

Bastila staggered back a step, stunned by the power and implications of those words.

"We saw this threat lurking in the unknown years before Revan began his immoral crusade to split the Order. If he had heeded the words of the Council and not led those who followed into the darkness, this prophecy could yet have been avoided. But he defied us, and as the prophecy warned, he broke himself upon the Star Forge in his attempt to stay the destroying hordes of honor represented by the Mandalorians. He fell by his own self-righteous actions.

"It was only by our actions that Revan was given a chance to set right what Revan wrought. And even so, he came within inches of achieving his goal, total dominion, and fulfilling the last terrible part of the prophecy.

"Are you now satisfied?"

Thoughts swirled madly in Bastila's head. Calum's fractured memories and blurry recollections were beginning to make sense to her, and at the same time she was beginning the brand of truth on his suspicion that Revan's crusade had been for an overarching goal. The phrase "ravenous Destroyers and founding Forge" stood out like a blazing signal fire in her mind, illuminating the colossal error they had all made.

"You made a mistake," she whispered in shock. "The prophecy was misinterpreted! The hordes of honor were not the Destroyers from the prophecy. The Forge was meant to stop them! And Revan knew this..."

Revan had gone out into the unknown after the Mandalorian wars to find the Star Forge, because he knew it was the only thing that could stop these Destroyers, the ones who wanted an end to the Force. His war on the Republic was a sham, a cover-up for his true plan of galactic unification. But then Malak killed him...

The inklings and vague shadows of the larger threat Calum saw in his dreams could indeed be a portent of darker things yet to be unleashed on the galaxy--things still out there, waiting.

"The Force help us, the mistake was yours."

Vrook's scowl, if it were possible, grew more sour. His voice came out hard, spitting. "The only mistake was made by those who marched blithely off to war. We were not the ones in error."

"Everyone is fallible, Master Vrook," Bastila retorted, surprised at the strength of her own voice. "Even I, and even you."

"Enough of this pointless banter!" Vrook abruptly changed the subject. "Where is Revan?" he demanded. "Your sins may have only been against those who have forgiven you, Bastila, but his are unforgivable crimes he has yet to answer for. No more can he be allowed to elude the hand of justice. Where is he?"

Bastila regarded Vrook for a long moment, saddened that so much wisdom had been attributed to him by so many for so little, and shamed that she had thought him open to reason. "Revan is dead, Master Vrook, Master Vandar. He died when Malak betrayed him. The man he is now is a different person, thanks to you. After all his sacrifices, after everything he has gone through to save the Republic and the Jedi, Calum Jan should not be made to suffer for Revan's sins. What we did to him - programming his mind with a life of our choosing - was a crime enough."

"Revan was a bloodthirsty tyrant who killed millions of people. What we did allowed him a chance to set right just the tiniest amount of the wrongs he did. What, then? Should there have been no justice served? We truly have no excuse."

Bastila ignored Vrook's venomous sarcasm. "It would be a prostitution of justice to punish him for crimes of which he has no memory after he has sacrificed so much to save everyone. I am sorry Masters, but I am no longer a part of the Jedi Order and do not answer to you. I will not betray him."

As she turned her back on them, she anticipated a tingling sensation in her brain telling her they were about to alter her mind, or a sudden yank as she was forcibly stopped with the Force that meant they had no intention of letting her leave. Almost to her surprise, the two Masters let her go in peace.

Maybe, just maybe, she thought, they had seen things from her point of view. For their sakes, she hoped so.

She would tell Calum he was right about everything, just as she knew he was. The weight of her realization made her ache to be in his arms again.

Halfway back through the maze of wreckage she'd navigated through to get from the outer gardens to the inner chambers, Bastila heard a noise; someone else moving in the ruins. Instantly, she stopped and scanned her immediate area, caution telling her whoever it was would likely know the moment she tried to ping her surroundings with the Force.

She couldn't see much in the now-fading light of the sunset that streamed in here and there, but she could still hear something definite.

Bastila realized it was a woman crying.

Following the sound, she came upon a beautiful young woman sitting forlornly in the middle of a dormitory room that was still mostly intact. Long blond hair was fallen over her shoulders and arms as she sat with her head buried in her arms as she hugged up as close to her knees as she could. The woman was very pregnant.

Without even trying, Bastila could sense waves of anguish and loneliness pouring from the sobbing woman.

Moved by compassion, she approached her. "Are you alright, miss? Do you need help?"

Hearing her voice, the woman looked up at her with eyes reddened by tears. "Oh, please, you have to help me. I came to find help for my father, he lives on a remote settlement and became very sick. I'm afraid he'll die before I can have my baby and I'll be all alone." She was overcome for a moment with another torrent of sobs. "I don't what I'll do if he... if he..."

Bastila dropped down to he knees beside the distraught woman and put an arm around her shoulder, trying her best to comfort her while still heeding her intuitive warning not to ply the Force on her.

"Hush now, shh," Bastila said soothingly. "I'll help you."

* * *

The burnt orange of the sunset had darkened to a deep red, casting its rays on the dead gardens like a wash from the bleeding sky. Calum wandered about the scraggy, leafless trees and withered stalks that had once been painted by magnificent living curtains of color, almost in a trance as he remembered the days of training he'd spent here. It was the one part of rediscovering Revan within him that Calum savored. Both experiences, though from different lives, had blended together in his mind to the point where each was nearly indistinguishable from the other.

Dantooine was where he'd spent much of his formative years, and as the memories came back to him he was able to cherish them anew for the times of true peace they had been. Returning to Dantooine years later after helping Bastila escape Taris and once again being taught to harness the Force was as special a time as his childhood, for, even in the midst of the galactic war, it had been a blessed few weeks of tranquility.

Then it had all come to an end.

Calum glanced over at Juhani who walked beside him, the dead flower still clutched in her hands. His first meeting with her had signaled the end of the beginning, and events afterward soon began moving at such a breathtaking pace they often left him struggling in their wake, desperately trying to catch up lest he be left behind completely. But he never regretted that first furious battle or what it signified, nor his instinctual decision to spare Juhani's life.

Though he was married to Bastila, he considered Juhani family as well. She'd been the first to step to his side during the agonizing and heart-wrenching division amongst his friends that Bastila's revelation aboard the _Leviathan_ had wrought. She'd stood by his side at the pinnacle of the Rakatan temple as Bastila betrayed him. And despite having no obligations to do so, after Calum and Bastila married and were threatened by rogue Sith assassins, Juhani had appointed herself their protector.

"Calum," Juhani said, snapping him from his reverie. "May I ask you a question?"

Calum looked up at the sky. Stars were beginning to appear high in the rapidly-darkening firmament. He hadn't realized it had been so long.

"Of course, Juhani," he answered, beginning to angle his way back toward the landspeeder, not eager to be among the gardens when night proper fell. He didn't wish to be stepping in the ashes of the garden's dead tenders when Revan began to claw his way out of the sealed door of his subconscious. Calum wished Bastila hadn't taken so long.

"It is difficult for me to say exactly what I mean, but I have been wondering; if you wished so badly to do good in order to convince us all that you were no longer Revan, after you succeeded why did you then decide you must leave the Order?" She was gazing forlornly at the dead flower in her hands, as if the once-vibrant orange blossom she held represented all the lost souls who lay in dust and ashes among the ruins of the Academy.

"_Talethia_," he answered in Nefirsi, a tribal Cathar tongue. Roughly translated, the word meant 'completion,' but it conveyed much more. It was often used by Cathar to describe one's soul mate, with whom they would bond for life.

"I would have been happy to live the life of a Jedi; there was little else for me except to be a soldier in the Republic as I then remembered. Yet, somehow I knew after Bastila's mother died on Tatooine that no matter how many Jedi laws spoke against it, I couldn't leave her side. Even if she never openly acknowledged me or her own hurt, I knew from that day that I might be the only one in the whole Jedi Order who could do anything to help her hidden feelings." Calum ran a hand through his hair and muttered, "_Lya daraven daravor,_" a Cathar phrase meaning 'from one heart to another.'

It was the closest he could come to describing how he could have know what he did.

Juhani nodded. She knew that well enough.

"When she came back to the Light on the Star Forge, begging me from the bottom of her soul to kill her, whatever doubt was left in my mind was erased. I knew neither of us could live without the other. Had I chosen to remain in the Order, walled off my feelings for her as best I could and attempted to struggle on under the Code, I would have taken my own lightsabre to my neck months ago, Juhani."

Calum was unable to speak for a moment, his breath catching in his throat. "What comes back to me in visions and dreams only she can alleviate, and I know within her lies the same kind of pain."

Juhani dropped the dead flower from her hands. "Where is she?" Juhani asked into the silence. The landspeeder was empty, Bastila nowhere in sight.

Stars twinkled in the night sky, like the lights of a thousand souls shining down from the afterlife. To Calum they just seemed achingly far away, and he was inundated by a feeling of terrible loneliness. The night always did this to him. He hated it; hated the dark and the false light of the stars that seemed only mocking him. His own darkness had no such pinpoints of light, not even the feeble shimmer of thermonuclear spheres burning through millions of light years of space.

Bastila was gone.

His loneliness grew into a horrible gnawing worry at the pit of his stomach. She should never have been in there this long.

--------------------------------

_"...You're the thing that matters to me most, and I sense this fear in you."_

**End part 2**

**

* * *

**The song quotes are taken from the Dark Tranquillity song Icipher, and is in no way owned by me; it remains the property of Brandstrom, Jivarp, Henriksson, and Stanne.


	3. Chapter 3

_"Encircled ad nauseam; an enemy to define ourselves, an enemy to refine our hate... No one knows my enemy like I do."_

--------------------------------

_You can't shut me out forever, you know_, Calum heard a voice whisper in his mind. Or was he just imagining things?

The air had turned chilly with nightfall, the breeze that stirred the grasses no longer a welcome cool from the heat of the sun, instead a miserable icy breath on his face. The dark around him was oppressive and the dim sights of the ruined garden had never reminded him so much of skeletons picked clean by scavengers. He felt like he was but a single mote of life in a dead sea. Had he not known she was there, Juhani in her red robes would have been all but invisible in the dark twilight.

As it had done for the last six months, the onset of nighttime cast its cloak of misery and loneliness on Calum. It was so much easier to think back on what he could only dimly remember when he was denied the light of the sun, more at the mercy of the dark parts of his soul when he was shrouded in darkness.

It was worse than ever tonight, because he knew in his heart that someone had taken Bastila from him, and he didn't know what to do.

_I am still here. I have always been here, let me help you._

For a moment, Calum's vision was skewed, as if seen through a mask--Revan's mask. Shutting his eyes did not help, it only increased the vision's intensity. He clenched his fists tightly, fingernails drawing blood from his palms as he tried to will the images away.

_Why are you still fighting me?_

The voice would not go away, no matter how hard he wished it gone. Calum recognized it, but his mind asked the question anyway.

"Who are you?"

_I am you._

Calum put a fist to his face between the eyes, felt the blood between his fingers, and cried silently to himself. He remembered too much, and not enough. Lightning-fast, the images flashed by, presenting him with scene after scene of senseless carnage, merciless torture, and brutal executions; some by his own hand, some not. The deeds he could recall, but not the purpose, though he knew a purpose existed. Sometimes he thought he knew, but was then overcome with too many doubts to hold the conclusion and had to go back to his frantic search for an answer.

_Let me help you,_ Revan said as more images flashed by.

Masks, white masks, were all he saw. Men without faces, without life, just mindless drones in the infinite hive of a heartless society.

"I hate you," Calum cursed the voice in his head.

_Hate me if you wish, but don't close your eyes to the truth just because it is unpleasant. There is no future without the truth. You and I are one and the same, and the both of us are weakened without the other._

"You're a murderer, why should you speak the truth?" Calum asked.

_Sometimes the galaxy needs murderers. That killing is murder is an inescapable fact, and yet legions of murderers are cultivated throughout the galaxy and lauded for their bravery and abilities to commit murder with ever greater proficiency. Millions cheer when they murder, and tremble in fear when they do not murder enough._

"Don't confuse a soldier with a murderer, Revan!"

_Dead is dead. What comes before death is what matters. The galaxy needs murderers who kill to protect life. A soldier fighting to defend the lives of his family and his people knows this, but in our darkest hour the Jedi willingly chose to turn aside from this truth._

"Well, I don't care. I don't ever want to have to rationalize killing again."

_You are a fool. You are free to turn your eyes away from reality, just as the Council did, but __when you fall to ruin it will be because you ignored truth and reason and refused to deal with the reality of what is. Killing is evil. The Jedi rightfully interpret it as so. But it is sometimes necessary. You understood when you killed Aleksie, when you fought your way across the galaxy to get to him. Don't think to hide your head in the sand and willingly blind yourself; it will only bring greater harm to you and those you care about._

Against his will, Calum recalled fighting Darth Malak, remembered the insatiable blood lust and his hunger Malak's pain and suffering for what he'd done to Bastila. His own life had meant nothing to him and he threw every ounce of power he possessed into that sole drive. The totality of his commitment still horrified him.

Looming in his mind, he saw again the faceless masses. Understanding dangled tantalizingly close, but just out of reach.

Calum sighed in defeat; he just wanted Bastila back. He couldn't do this - fighting Revan constantly - anymore, he wasn't even sure if he wanted to.

_I'm not your enemy,_ Revan said, _I am you..._

Calum opened his eyes, took his hand away from his face and straightened. He was not going to get any answers by standing around feeling sorry for himself. His feeling of terrible apprehension still remained, but the self-pity had passed.

Bastila was gone, and his mind could offer only one explanation.

For the first time since the Star Forge, Calum didn't fight the tendrils of Darth Revan he felt lurking in the back of his mind. He welcomed the presence, knowing he was going to need it if what he suspected were true.

"I can't wait anymore, Juhani," Calum told his Cathar companion. "We have to go in and find Bastila."

"Did she not say it would be best if the Masters not know of your presence?"

"I'm afraid they've done something to her. And if they have..." Calum trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid. He still didn't want to think about what he might do if anything had happened to her. "I know she trusts Master Vrook and Master Vandar, but I don't. Let's go."

* * *

The interior of the academy was pitch black under the darkness; the tiny sliver of a moon that had risen in the sky was insufficient to pour its cold light on the ruins. Calum didn't bother drawing his lightsabre to provide light, sensing his way through the maze of collapsed buildings, devastated hallways, and vaporized rooms with the Force instead. He supposed it was only appropriate that as the darkness gathered in his mind he should walk in darkness. From every shattered wall and fallen ceiling he felt nothing but the reflection of life-rending pain and deathly terror, and despite what he knew, he felt as if he were responsible.

His temperament had turned from lonely misery to numb acceptance of what he couldn't change. There was nothing to balance against the dark side of him he felt lurking, as if just behind the thin veil of his consciousness.

It was as good a time to fall as any.

"Something is wrong," Juhani said from behind him. Calum grunted an acknowledgment.

He agreed. The mist of deception lay heavy in the atmosphere, thickening the farther into the ruins they ventured. Calum was not surprised, it only further cemented his fears that Bastila had been betrayed by the ones she thought she could trust.

Anger boiled up inside him. There would be a reckoning, he promised himself. Revan demanded it.

A light caught his attention, diverting his mind back to reality. He could see a small circle of light up ahead, illuminating what had once been the Council Chamber. Master Vrook and Master Vandar, the two objects of his ire, stood within the pool of incandescence.

Everything inside Calum screamed at him to run forward and shout at them, to unleash the fury of the Force at them, to slice them open with his lightsabre--anything. But he knew satisfying any of those urges would only exacerbate the situation and make finding the truth all but impossible. No Jedi Master was ever more evasive than one confronted with someone they considered 'irrational.' Calum knew none of those actions were things a rational, thinking man should choose.

With great strength of will, he forced himself to consider the possibility that he could be wrong. He intended to find the truth, not make unfounded accusations.

_The truth is both your greatest ally and your greatest enemy. It can either aid or hinder you, deal victory or defeat in a single hand to what you strive for. But it is always better to know the truth, no matter how horrible, than to hang your hope on lies._

From the darkest parts of his mind, Calum found wisdom. Revan knew the value of the truth; it was his highest value.

Calum gripped the lightsabre at his belt in determination, and strode forward into the glowing circle, Juhani at his side.

"Ah, yes, it was only a matter of time before you returned, Revan," Vrook said in greeting, fixing Calum with an unfriendly expression. "And I see you still keep Juhani on the same short leash as you did when you came here before."

Juhani's golden eyes for a moment flashed with indignation. "I follow him because I choose to, and because he is a friend."

"So you may think," Vrook muttered darkly.

"Where is Bastila?" Calum demanded, unable to keep his voice neutral.

"Bastila is not here," Vandar answered. "Leave us, she did."

Vrook narrowed his eyes in a bitter frown at Calum. "She forsook the Jedi Order for you, Revan. She came to us one last time so we might know the full extent of her abandonment of the Jedi."

"She came to you because she trusted you!" Calum couldn't help raising his voice in anger, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. "She sought guidance from you. What did you do with her?"

"We did nothing to her. She left of her own free will, we did not hinder her. Perhaps you should ask yourself if the reasons she told you were the true ones. If she has not returned to you, then perhaps she has come to enlightenment and realized her duty, and exiled herself."

For a moment, the thought that Bastila had gone off on her own without him crippled Calum with hopeless dread. Maybe it was too much for her to deal with his pain on top of her own, maybe she couldn't handle the heartbreaking stresses anymore. Maybe, maybe, maybe...

"What did you tell her?" he asked finally, the fire gone from his voice.

"She wished to know why we were opposed to intervention in the Mandalorian War," Vrook responded. "You forced our hand by doing as you did, Revan. What happened to you was of your own making."

"Indeed," Vandar concurred. "Come close to fulfilling a disastrous prophecy, you did."

"Master Vandar!" Vrook shouted in alarm. "Prophecy is not meant for the unlearned!"

"Should we keep even this from him, Vrook? Is not the deception we put over him enough?"

Vandar's argument only angered Vrook further. "There is no one more dangerous to prophecy than the man who stands before us! What catastrophe might he bring if told the words?"

Calum had read the histories; prophecy brought nothing but trouble. The Jedi ?Order had massacred thousands of innocent Padawans once in order to avert a prophecy, only to fail to kill the one that mattered. Prophecy was a seething pot of ruin and destruction.

Calum's quiet voice bristled with threat. "You gave her a prophecy?"

"She demanded it, but it is not for your ears, Revan."

He felt his tenuous hold on objectiveness and reason slipping away by the moment. He was getting nowhere in this foolish game of words with the Masters. Vrook, at least, obviously had no intention of giving a straight answer. The man would rather continue feeding him half-truths and rationalized lies than let him know the reason behind his perpetual deception.

Darth Revan, just beneath the surface, waited to be released.

"What we told Bastila is not your concern. And we have told you quite enough." Vrook suddenly snapped his fingers.

Calum could then finally sense them coming out of the dark. A dozen Republic guards, heavily armed and equipped like a riot squad. They held their powerful rifles pointed at him and Juhani, all wearing sternly somber expressions.

Juhani had her lightsabre out in a flash, trying to place herself in front of Calum and ward away the Republic guards as they surrounded them. Calum's hand tightened around the hilt of his own lightsabre.

"What is the meaning of this?" Juhani demanded of Master Vrook.

"You are ordered to stand aside, Padawan Juhani," Vrook commanded, ignoring her.

"Never!" she hissed.

The Republic men locked in closer around her and Calum.

Instead of panic, a resigned calm came over Calum. As he looked down the condemning guns of those he had worked tirelessly to save, he felt the veil in his mind being slowly withdrawn. The Republic had become his enemy once again, and the person inside him willing fight the Republic had to come out of the shadows and into the light once more.

Calum closed his eyes as he felt resolve enter into him.

One of the soldiers spoke in a monotone. "Darth Revan, you are under arrest for high treason against the Republic Senate, coercion of Republic military and civilian authority into committing treason, genocide, and quite a long list of other war crimes."

The man who spoke the accusations was immaterial. They were all his enemies now.

"So," Calum said, "everything I have done counts as nothing, then? It doesn't matter how hard I strove to defeat Malak, nor does the pain and horror of what I went through to destroy the Star Forge matter. In spite of all I have done to preserve and protect the Republic, I am granted not even a pittance of forgiveness for crimes I cannot even remember?"

"Clever words to evade the hands of justice, fallen one," Vrook sneered. "Nothing you can say or do will bring back the millions who died because of you, or the millions who will yet die because of what you have wrought. Your very existence is a crime we indulged in only out of necessity. We gave you the chance to make up for just the tiniest amount of the evils you have caused, and now it is time for you to pay for the rest; with your life."

"Don't do this," he pleaded one last time. "Don't make this mistake."

"We do not make mistakes. The one who has erred is you."

With that, all restraint was lost, the veil was rent. Darth Revan lived.

"No." Calum's green lightsabre ignited, glowing in glorious compliment to Juhani's blue. "I will not give in to this."

"So be it, then. You will die here, Dark One." At Vrook's signal, the Republic guards opened fire.

Calum had given himself completely over to Revan; there was no hesitation on his part. Lightning-quick, he threw up a barrier shield with the Force to deflect the encircling rifle fire and leaped forward with Juhani, their lightsabres bared. As blaster bolts ricocheted in every direction, Revan swung the green blade in fast chopping motions, slicing arms off the nearest two soldiers.

The battle was like adrenaline pumping in his veins. It excited him, made him hunger for its continuation. He knew it was a fight to the death, yet the fact only seemed to make it more exhilarating, for it meant he was coming to know once again what it was to truly be himself.

In that moment Calum and Revan were one.

As more soldiers trained their weapons on him, Revan retaliated by hurling a twisting rope of blue-white Force lightning at them. It sizzled as it hit flesh, hissed its electric fury amidst the soldiers' screams of pain. Hot with Revan's fury, the lightning cooked them alive as they dropped. There was no thought in his mind except for the next kill.

Revan whirled about to slice apart the weapon of another soldier who had lunged for him. With a few deft slices, he brought the Republic man to his knees. He could see nothing but where he was about to strike; the man's open chest. The fear and hopelessness on his opponent's face meant nothing to him once the commitment to kill was made. He drove his green blade forward, the point seeking flesh.

He was surprised to find his lightsabre blocked and turned aside by another. Revan's determined eyes met Vrook's. He grimaced and turned his attention to the old man, leaving the stunned Republic soldier on the floor, wondering why he wasn't dead. As he rose to meet Vrook's challenge, he heard Juhani continue dealing death to the soldiers.

Clashing blades with Vrook was immensely refreshing, a true test of his skills. It was something he'd wanted to do for a long time.

He looked into his opponent's eyes, saw nothing but grim, dogged determination, and threw himself forward.

Revan lunged low, stabbing down for the Jedi's knees, and his green blade was quickly turned away by an elementary parry from Vrook. In response to the block, he cut upwards, throwing his momentum into a sudden drive at shoulder level. Again, Vrook's blade was there, blocking his. Revan leaned into the parry, locking their blades together as he pressed forward.

He forced Vrook to yield ground, and once he did, the battle was his. He struck out repeatedly against the old man's guard, and was almost pleased when he did not cave in under the force of his attack. He tested Vrook's tenacious defense with blow after blow from his green lightsabre. Every last vestige of respect and reverence he'd once had for the Jedi Master had been stripped away, leaving but nothing but pure aggression.

Revan didn't allow the Jedi Master any breaks, he pushed on relentlessly, spinning, lunging, cutting, chopping, swinging furiously. Steadily, he pressed Vrook back, out of the little circle of light, until they fought in darkness by only the glow of their sabres. Revan's confidence grew the longer the battle progressed; he could feel his power rising, sensed victory at hand.

Suddenly, flying out of the dark, came a grim-faced Republic soldier wielding a vibrosword. Yelling ferociously, he swung the scintillating blade at Revan's head. In the space of a split second, Revan ducked low and grabbed the man's wrists, flinging him forward at Vrook as he dove.

The Republic man gaped in surprise as Vrook's lightsabre cut him across the chest.

For an instant, taken by utter surprise, Vrook hesitated. As the mortally wounded soldier collapsed to the ground, the Jedi Master just stood there. But Revan was already on the move. Sidestepping the fallen Republic man, Revan cut low and cut hard against Vrook's flank.

Belatedly, Vrook reacted to the threat, turning his green blade down to deflect Revan's as it scored a deep but nonlethal wound along his side.

In a matching maneuver, Revan cut upwards again, and his blade destroyed the hilt of Vrook's weapon.

Injured, his lightsabre gone, Vrook fell to his knees, wincing in pain. Revan wanted to kill him.

Revan wanted to kill him, but there was something in his mind now holding him back, some last remnant of restraint that told him not to cross this line. In his heart, Revan knew the killing sickened him.

Calum hated that he had to kill.

Instead of bringing his lightsabre down on the wounded Jedi Master, Calum shoved him into the darkness with a mild Force pulse, unwilling to kill him. Already the reality of all the Republic soldiers he'd just killed was beginning to sink in. It appalled him that it had come back down to this.

Calum turned away from the dark and back to the little circle of light where stood still Master Vandar. Juhani, panting with exertion, stood waiting for him. She had deactivated her lightsabre, but he left his on. He knew this was not over.

When he approached, he saw Vandar holding an expression of such profound sorrow that for a moment Calum's determination faltered. He saw in Vandar's peculiar eyes not only sorrow for the men Calum had killed, but also what seemed almost like an empathy for how Calum felt inside at the deed.

"We have to go, Juhani," Calum said, not taking his eyes off the silent Master Vandar. "The Republic has betrayed me again." In that moment, he remembered every last detail of how it had felt the first time; the disbelief, the twisted logic behind the treachery, the inner strength he mustered to carry on. It was all the same.

Without speaking, Juhani bowed and came to his side as he turned to leave, hopeless thoughts filling his mind. One way or another, he had lost Bastila to the Jedi Council. They themselves might not have done anything with her, but he'd come to them needing help in finding her and they'd betrayed him.

In that moment, Calum had gone beyond feeling the remembered blood on his hands. He deactivated his lightsabre and stepped into the blackness of the ruins.

"Wait," Calum heard from behind him. He turned to see Vandar walk toward him, holding up a hand in placation.

"Deserve to hear what we told Bastila, you do," Vandar said. "A prophecy concerning you, it was. In times past, such disaster has been brought by prophecy that Vrook feared the implications if tell you we did. I fear know this prophecy you must, for truly understand it we do not. Perhaps you will."

"What is it?" Calum asked, suddenly breathless with dread.

Vandar spoke, but it was not his words that Calum heard; he felt them in his heart:

_The war hero of the Jedi will save his people from the hordes of honor and turn himself to break upon the jaw of the ravenous Destroyers and the founding Forge. Should he seek a path out of destruction, he will lead those who follow into the darkness, and return to seize all rule of Government and Order._

Things flew past him in a rush, dizzyingly fast but strangely comprehensible. Calum remembered with frightening vividness the brutalities of the Mandalorian War, remembered feeling his friend Aleksie's jaw break under his fist, remembered the majesty of the Star Forge and its terrifying purpose. More startling, the visions kept rushing at him, not stopping after the searing explosion of Malak's betrayal. He saw a planet eclipsed by a ghostly blue glow, an unholy alliance between the survivors of the Jedi and Sith Orders, the implacable, unstoppable might of the white horde. Suddenly, in his mind's eye, it made sense.

"Thank you," Calum whispered. At last, he understood what he had to do, why he had to leave.

Vandar nodded. "Go now, you should, Darth Revan."

* * *

Aliid absently rubbed his fingerless hands together against the unexpected chill of the night. The breeze from the plains whipped back his long hair and dark mantle as if he were standing in the face of a coastal tide. With a sharp face and eyes like piercing slits squinted against the wind he watched the dead garden, his gaze roamed the twisted, contorted trees and withered vines hung from broken trellises, searched the flower beds where grew only weeds among the ashes of the former beauty.

They would return there. He knew it as surely as he knew the sun would rise in the next twelve hours. _He_ would return. He had no choice but to return, Aliid knew. It had been part of the pact, inviolate and sacred to all involved.

Darth Revan would not dare break the accord with what was at stake. He would return to the garden, seeking the answer that eluded him. Just as Revan sought his answers, he would provide them to the one Aliid served.

Revan's promise had gone unfulfilled, and the wages would come due.

Aliid's keen eyes picked up movement in the dead garden, by the dormant landspeeder where he expected. Stealthily he moved through the dark, in his absolute element with only the light from the stars and thin sliver of moon illuminating his way. Even since losing his fingers, he excelled at feeling his way through blackness, often relying on nothing else but the sensitive touch of his palms. Over the years, his senses had gotten stronger than he knew was normal, and the loss of his fingers had almost been worth the trade. Even so, his fingers weren't all he'd lost.

With no more noise than the wind that blew through the grass, Aliid came close enough to see the faces of the two figures in the garden. One, a woman dressed in tight-fitting red Jedi robes that appeared pitch black under the cover of night, was Cathar. He didn't recognize the man she followed, but there was little doubt in Aliid's mind that it was Darth Revan. He knew the Dark Lord now traveled with a Cathar companion, and it could not logically be anyone else. Revan was the only one who would be drawn to the dead gardens, lured by the tantalizing scent of purpose.

The Cathar suddenly tensed, and Aliid knew she'd discovered him. She couldn't see him - he doubted anyone could see far enough into the darkness where he hid to catch him by sight - but she could sense him nonetheless. She looked Jedi, but Aliid doubted she'd detected his Force signature--what was left of it was indistinguishable from the random currents one would expect to feel in the Force. Her heightened Cathar senses had most likely detected either the sound of his breathing, the smell of the sweat on his face and hands, or both.

Aliid stepped out from his hiding place, presenting himself to Darth Revan and his servant, stealth abandoned.

Instantly, the Cathar sprang in front of Revan, drawing her blue lightsabre. "Identify yourself!" she hissed in warning. Aliid saw fierce loyalty reflected in her golden eyes from the blue glow of her sabre.

He held his hands out to his sides, useless, fingerless stumps. "I am Aliid," he said to Revan's servant.

"The man is unarmed, Juhani, he hasn't even any fingers," he heard Revan say from behind her. The Cathar, Juhani, held an arm out to hold him back when he tried to approach Aliid.

"I do not trust him. He makes my hair stand on end." She was glaring frighteningly at him.

Aliid was unmoved by her deep suspicion, he didn't care what she thought of him. She might have run him through and he still would not have blinked an eye.

"What is your purpose here?" Revan asked him.

"I come to you as a messenger from Master Izayus," Aliid responded. "He requests an audience with my lord."

Revan frowned at him and Juhani took a menacing step forward. Aliid didn't flinch as she put the tip of her lightsabre at his throat. He boldly met her fierce eyes, silently waiting.

"I don't know your master, and I don't have time for this," Revan said. He laid a hand on Juhani's shoulder, trying to ease her away from Aliid, but she did not turn away.

"We have to find Bastila," he whispered into the Cathar's ear, not knowing Aliid could hear it perfectly.

Reluctantly, the Cathar lowered her lightsabre and deactivated the blue blade, sending the garden back into blackness. She and Darth Revan started to leave.

"Your wife is a guest at the house of Master Izayus," Aliid said to them as they turned away from him.

Instantly, Juhani whirled about and leaped for him, wrapping her hands around his throat as they crashed to the ground. She landed hard on top of him, a knee on his chest and her sharp Cathar claws around his neck. "What did you say!" she snarled, her face inches from his.

Lying perfectly still, Aliid answered calmly. "Jedi Bastila is at the house of Izayus. He wishes to speak with Lord Revan concerning our agreement."

Revan abruptly seized the Cathar by her shoulder and pulled her off Aliid, her claws nicking his neck in passing. He shook her with urgency.

"This man is not the threat, Juhani! Not him!" he yelled. "I know you're upset for me, but this will not help!"

Wordlessly, Aliid rose to his feet. Under the starlight, he saw Revan's face had gone pale as the moon.

"Take me there," Revan said to him.

Aliid was surprised at what he heard in Revan's voice. It was fear. Revan was afraid.

* * *

The song quote is taken from the Dark Tranquillity song "The Enemy" and remains the property of Henriksson, Nicklasson, Jivarp, and Stanne.


	4. Chapter 4

**Part 4**

_"In a world beyond controlling, are you going to deny the savior in front of your eyes? Stare into the night."_

--------------------------------

_"The war hero of the Jedi will save his people from the hordes of honor and turn himself to break upon the jaw of the ravenous Destroyers and the founding Forge. Should he seek a path out of destruction, he will lead those who follow into the darkness, and return to seize all rule of Government and Order."_

The words, incessantly meaningful, played over and over in Calum's mind. From beneath the fragile veil in his consciousness that still obscured his former and true self, knowledge bubbled forth.

_It is a static prophecy; the worst kind there is. It's the only kind of prophecy that Jedi born in the last thousand years have been able to give or receive, because, unlike true prophecy, it does not require innate understanding. Static prophecies can be perceived by anyone with a connection to the Force, but always cause ceaseless trouble. They are impossible to avert. Even just knowledge of one's existence is enough to render it irrevocable. Because they are so deceptively easy to interpret, the past is filled with Jedi who followed the words literally and brought about the very calamity they were trying to avoid. Once bound to it, there is no way out of a static prophecy. The commitment is irrevocable, the outcome inevitable. The only thing you can change is yourself and how you deal with it._

A floodgate had opened in his mind, bringing forth arcane and confusing facts, theories, postulations. It all made inextricable sense to him. But more than forgotten knowledge of the concept, the words had evoked strong, vivid images that seemed at once to validate and invalidate the very nature of the prophecy before him. Key events, both past and future, played out before his mind's eye.

It was like looking through the words and seeing through the deception of their seeming simplicity.

It gave him the answer he needed.

He had saved his people and been broken for his knowledge of the Forge and his campaign against the ravenous Destroyers yet to be unleashed. Now, he had to continue his quest, plunge into the darkness to fight a battle for the existence of life itself.

A sudden gust of the chilly wind whipped some hair into his face, distracting him from his brooding. Calum looked up at the loping figure of Aliid just ahead of him and Juhani. The man moved in a graceful stealth with practiced ease, presenting only as small a silhouette against the star-filled sky as seemed humanly possible. Calum more than once wondered if the strange man had Cathar blood somewhere in his ancestry, so natural was his cat-like prowl.

Something about the fingerless man was indistinctly familiar to Calum, as was the name he'd mentioned; Izayus. He knew he should recognize the name, its importance to him and Bastila, but his mind drew a complete blank. He felt nothing stirring from the dark partitions of his mind where Revan dwelled, just the same placid existence.

At the thought of the name Izayus, Calum's thought immediately returned to his most pressing concern. He was almost certain that Aliid, in his guileless manner, had told him the truth, that Bastila indeed was at the house of this Izayus. That Aliid would so freely admit it to him gave him pause, however, and Calum realized he could very well be walking into another Jedi trap.

Already his mind was coming up with every worst scenarios conceivable, and even some inconceivable. Perhaps a secret team of Jedi enforcers were lying in wait. Perhaps the place was a heavily-armed bunker with a full contingent of security troops armed with stunner weapons he couldn't counter, nerve gas, and ultra-sonic cerebral devastators. Perhaps the Republic had raised an army for the sole purpose of capturing him.

Calum angrily brushed such doomsaying thoughts aside and concentrated on watching the strange man he followed. Aliid had stopped before the dark yawning mouth of a cave. Calum frowned, but Juhani beat him to the question.

She grabbed Aliid by the arm. "Why have you taken us here?" she hissed.

"Master Izayus awaits you within," Aliid responded calmly. "He charged me to bring you here, not to his house. He wishes an audience with Lord Revan here."

"Let him go, Juhani, he knows nothing," Calum urged quietly. A passive probe of Force auras within the cave had revealed something unexpected to Calum; he knew this cave, recognized the wafting Force signatures of sensitive crystals redolent in the air. He knew also that the powerful crystals would mask all but the most powerful of individual Force signatures, making it the perfect place for a Force user to hide.

They would have to proceed with utmost caution.

He pulled Juhani away from Aliid and ignited his green lightsabre to light the way. Juhani activated her blue blade and put herself again between him and Aliid, who led them into the cave. They passed the carcasses of freshly killed kinrath, whose liquid insides had spilled over the floor of the cave, sending up a spectacular stench. Calum almost gagged at the smell; it reminded him too much of acid-burned flesh, something a memory from somewhere told him was particularly gruesome.

Save for the periodic dripping of cave water and the hum of his and Juhani's lightsabres, the cave was silent as they moved through its lonely recesses. Scattered about here and there on the floor were dull fragments of lightsabre crystals, too small and impure for practical use and almost as worthless as pebbles. The broken fragments, dull and lifeless when Aliid passed them, grew brighter in sheen when Juhani and Calum were close, as if reacting to the different presences. Calum had heard of such things, but never really put much stock in the accounts. If it were true, then he could only wonder what it meant about the nature of Aliid.

Calum deactivated his lightsabre when he spotted a glow up ahead, a multi-colored wash of light he remembered from the last time he'd been in this cave. The main crystal vein was where he'd found the green crystal for his lightsabre. He'd given Juhani his original blue as a peace offering, which she gladly accepted. She still used the same one in her own lightsabre, having destroyed her old red crystal.

The crystal vein was every bit as breathtakingly beautiful as it had been the last time. The chamber, quite large for the cave system it was a part of, was covered with angular, jagged outcroppings of the glowing crystals. Piercing blue, vibrant green, and vivid gold crystal growths blanketed the floor in a tiny forest of exquisite stone, festooned the walls in great curtains of sparkling light, and hung from the ceiling like a majestic natural chandelier. In a few places, the rare violet and teal crystals were fused in their exotic patterns. In the whole chamber, Calum had only ever found one instance of the prized orange crystal in what was a tiny, impure growth.

Beholding the shimmering beauty of the crystal vein brought a tear to Calum's eye. It was still one of the loveliest places in the galaxy he'd ever seen.

Suddenly, his eye caught the silhouette of a figure standing amidst the glowing crystals. He lost track of Aliid, focusing intently on the man he saw ahead. In the luminescence of the glowing crystals, he saw that the man wore what appeared to be an archaic dress uniform beneath a heavy battle cloak. The soft light flashed off shiny buckles and brass buttons, and was absorbed by the crisply-cut fabric of a magnificent dress coat which bore many decorations, casting reflections of their own. The cloak, save for a gold crescent insignia that cinched it at the neck, did not merely dampen the light, but swallowed it.

"Who are you?" Calum called.

"I am Izayus, of course," the man answered in a deep, powerful voice.

Up closer, Calum could see his face in the light of the crystals all around. He looked well on in years, certainly into middle-age, but still possessed of an unmatchable vigor. Hard creases lined his face, he had a full head of thick graying hair and a short, well-trimmed beard on his chin and jawline. Izayus had predatory eyes, like an Alderaanian sea hawk, that watched with rapt attention from beneath his rock-like brow.

Face to face finally, Calum's patience was nearly at an end. "Where is she?"

Izayus casually rested a hand on a towering pillar of incandescent green. "She is safe."

"I want to see her," Calum growled. "Now. Or you'll have no 'audience' with me."

"Very well," Izayus acquiesced. He motioned with his hand at someone Calum couldn't see beyond the green glow--Aliid, it turned out. The statuesque column of green crystal dimmed almost to black when Aliid stepped up next to his master, laying a small device on the floor of the cave.

A hologram suddenly appeared, showing the disorienting picture of a woman sitting in an oddly-moving chair that was not included in the hologram. As if noticing, the woman stood, stroking shoulder-length hair. She was with child, and appeared nearly due.

"Aliid?" she exclaimed with a softness Calum was used to hearing from Bastila. She obviously cared for the man. "What is it?"

Calum instantly wondered what this woman was to the mysterious Aliid and the even more enigmatic Izayus.

"Lord Revan wishes to talk to his wife."

"Revan?" There was another voice. Calum couldn't see on he hologram who had spoken, but he knew who it was regardless. His heart leaped when he saw Bastila come into view on the hologram. He wanted to cry in relief, or cry out her name, or smile at her, or any one of a hundred other things he could have done. For the moment he was just so relieved to see her safe and sound that he couldn't make himself react.

"Bastila, are you alright?" It was Juhani voicing her concern. Calum didn't trust his voice to speak. There was a lump in his throat he couldn't speak past.

Bastila nodded. "I am fine. I don't know how I came to be here, but I have not been harmed."

"I can't tell you how relieved I am to know you're alright," Calum finally forced from his mouth. "I am going to get you out of this, Bastila, I swear."

She smiled one of her rapturous smiles that he lived for. "I know you will."

Abruptly, the hologram was cut off and Aliid removed the projector from Izayus' presence. The green pillar of crystal resumed its transcendental glowing as the strange man left its vicinity.

"Are you satisfied?" Izayus asked. His arms were crossed over the lapels of his dark jacket, he observed Calum with a scrutinizing stare that reminded him of something he couldn't quite seem to name.

"What do you want with Bastila?" Calum responded.

Izayus snorted at the question. "I want nothing with her. I wished the collateral damage minimal, and you promised it would be so. You brought her into this. This was the only way I could draw you to me. I regret I have to use an innocent bystander, but you of all people should understand the need to take the measures necessary to achieve a certain goal."

Calum gaped for a moment, trying to assimilate what he'd just heard. "I promised you nothing. I've never even met you, much less promised you anything." As soon as he said the words, he instinctively knew it was a mistake, even though it was truth. It was not what Izayus wanted to hear.

His voice rose in anger. "You lie! We had an accord, you and I. You, Revan, agreed to my price in return for my knowledge. How dare you think to so mock me!"

Stunned by Izayus' menacing fury, Calum couldn't form words. There were a thousand things he wanted to scream at the man, but couldn't put a one to his tongue. All he could manage was a bewildered, "What?"

Izayus' deep-set eyes, shimmering green with reflected light from the crystal beside him, glared balefully at him. "You would play me for a fool? I have not forgotten our agreement. What, did you think that I would? Did you think I would be so easily lulled into complacence over such a matter? You bring shame to the title of Darth!" He spat at his feet and suddenly Calum understood, at least partially, why he had angered the man so.

Under different circumstances, Calum would have groaned in helplessness and long-suffering. Izayus had to be a man he'd known during his time as Dark Lord of the Sith. He could very well be a Sith himself, Calum realized. He would have to be very careful around the man.

Dredging up a facade of self-control and authority from he knew not where, Calum forced himself to deal with Izayus as he thought a former Sith Lord should.

"Forgive me, Master Izayus." He grimaced, wondering if he dared tell him the truth. Starkly, he realized he had no choice. "I was stripped of my title and power over the Sith Empire well over a year ago. I lost allies, allegiances, powers, and even my memories when the Jedi attacked my ship and Malak usurped my rule." Calum felt a little sick saying the words, at the way they sounded to his own ears. He was convincing even to himself, he sounded almost... genuine. He was unsure just how much of him was Revan and how much was Calum as he spoke; the two roles were blurred almost into one.

"If you and I had an agreement, I can no longer remember it. My memories increase daily, but much of my knowledge and powers remain buried still. I came only because you are holding my wife prisoner and your servant informed me you wished to speak with me. If you would speak to me, then speak."

Izayus creased his brow at Calum, considering what he'd said. "I did not follow your war closely, Revan, but I did come to know that the Sith forces were eventually taken from you. Certain rumors came to my ears that you had been destroyed, while others claimed you had gone into hiding, and still others that you had defected from the Sith. I paid little heed to any, for rumors are the seed of mistrust. But I see now that some were based in truth." He held out his hand and grasped Calum's arm. "I see there is honor in you still. There was once truth and integrity within the Sith. Truth, honor, respect. I see you carry on in this tradition while I have forgotten my own."

Izayus bowed. "Forgive me, Revan, for the sin of my presumption."

"Think nothing of it," Calum said smoothly, still disturbed by how naturally he was dealing with the older man, a man who was obviously Sith. "Very few in the galaxy know the truth of what happened to me. You were wise not to put stock in rumor. True knowledge is the only pillar and ground of power and reality."

"There is no future without the truth," Izayus intoned knowingly.

"What is it you wished to speak to me of?" Calum asked finally.

"Forgive me, Lord Revan, but I meant to demand of you why the price of our agreement was not accomplished. When they came for her again, I could have no doubt that you had not fulfilled your promise to me. But I see now that things had gone beyond your control. I never should have discounted the potential for interference by the Jedi Order. Because of them, my daughter still suffers."

"The woman who is with my wife?" Calum asked. "She is your daughter?"

Izayus nodded his head, sighing. Calum's flesh tingled with anticipation of something he could not fathom. He felt as if he were on the brink of some revelation of great importance that would not come to him. Something was drawing him closer to this strange Sith, an intuitive feeling he could not discount urged him to probe deeper.

"Izayus, what was this agreement you and I made?"

Izayus sighed. "If you truly do not remember, then I will start at the beginning, for only then will you fully understand why I ask of you what I do." He gestured to him and Juhani. "Come, sit. It is quite a story I must tell you."

* * *

Calum sat just across from the strange Sith man while Juhani stood stoically just behind him, her lightsabre dangling from a short chain on her wrist, just a flick away.

"First you should know of the old Sith Empire," Izayus began simply. "Before Exar Kun's headstrong and foolhardy war with the Republic, there was a true Sith civilization in the outer reaches of the galaxy. For centuries the Jedi looked on us with disdain because we did not follow their stringent teachings, and they invented every sort of black lie to cast us in as cruel a light as they could imagine. We were tyrants, murderers, cold-hearted beasts without a shred of decency or reasoned thought, mindless animals enslaved to selfish desires. We were all that and more in their eyes. Fairly said, there were certainly enough Sith Lords who followed just that pattern.

"But there were those Sith who understood that widespread murder, torture, and oppression was no way to rule one's domain. Some knew the value of firm but honest rule. Make no mistake, however; none were democracies. No Sith Lord was ever elected by those he or she ruled. But there were those who understood that mindless death and destruction would never inspire true loyalty in their subjects.

"I was underlord to one such Sith, Nord Salga was his name, and for many years my greatest hope was to become his successor."

"This was before Exar Kun?" Juhani asked. Izayus nodded. "Forgive me, Izayus, but how can that be?"

The old Sith chuckled softly, a deep rumbling laugh. "It is difficult for me to explain to one such as yourself. For now, let it suffice to say that despite my appearance, I am not human. I have lived for many centuries, as do all masters of House Iza."

Juhani frowned, clearly not understanding, but let the matter drop. Calum raised his assessment of Izayus as he continued.

"Lord Salga was engaged in a bitter war with a rival empress, Darth Morte, when he presented me with a chance to advance myself in his eyes and put myself in a better position to carry on his rule. A traveler had come to him, a strange, masked woman purportedly from a place where she claimed they had conquered the Force itself. She offered to provide Nord Salga with the means to neutralize and destroy Morte's armies of Sith disciples, powerful Force users all of them. Salga informed me that I was to be part of her plan to create forces capable of nullifying Empress Morte's vast powers.

"It was my honor to serve my lord and my empire, but I eventually realized that Nord Salga, in fighting Morte for so long, had begun to think like her and act as she did. The things he gave the stranger from the unknown free reign to do came to sicken me to my heart."

A shallow cough interrupted Izayus' story for a moment. Aliid laid a concerned hand on his shoulder. "Master, are you well?"

The Sith nodded. "Yes, I am fine, Aliid. Thank you."

He was silent for long moment.

"What things?" Calum asked into the silence.

"Terrible things all of them. I told you what the Jedi thought of all of us, but I thought myself and the empire I served better than many other of the Sith Lords' domains." The old Sith shook his head regretfully. "What Lord Salga allowed to be done in his by the stranger from the unknown was no different than what the worst of the Sith would have done."

There was a glassy look of recalled horrors in his eyes as he continued his story. "This masked woman with no eyes first collected hundreds of the fairest virgins to be found in all of Nord Salga's worlds, and one by one she tortured them to death until she found one she said would suit her purposes. To the one she spared, the stranger in the mask performed all manner of sorcery with a power none of Salga's teachers, nor he himself, could fathom. When she was finished, Lord Salga declared my initiation rite, the price for which I could become his apprentice and successor."

Izayus stopped again. A lone tear tracked its way down his hard face.

"He commanded me to sire a child by this poor, tortured woman.

"And yet there were no doubts in my mind. I still thought Salga the Sith Lord I had served for decades, but he was not. His ally from the unknown had twisted him into the same kind of beast as the mad Empress Morte. He named me his apprentice after I fathered a daughter by his command, so yet for another few months I continued deceiving myself as he slipped farther and farther into this madness.

"I was finally woken to the truth when Izaya was born. No sooner had I given her a name and taken her in my arms for the first time than the masked stranger cut the throat of her mother and left, never to be seen again. Over the years, as I gradually uncovered the truth, it sickened me what I had been an unwitting part of.

"Salga's war with Morte died down eventually, and they even became allies when Salga promised greater conquest to be had at the expense of the other Sith Lords and their domains. I was forgotten. But by then, I no longer cared. Salga and Morte and their combined forces waged a new war against the fractured Lords' Alliance while I cared for my daughter as she grew. I wanted nothing more to do with any Sith Lord's empire when I saw what Salga had become--Salga, who I once believed the most honorable of all of us."

Suddenly, Izayus' face took on a chilling emptiness. His voice was a quiet rasp. "Izaya was sixteen years old, barely mature enough to carry a man's seed, when Salga's servants raped her. I caught them and killed them all, but not before they did to her things I will not describe."

Calum was horrified, revulsion sweeping through him in shivers.

Izayus was not yet finished with his account. His stone face looked to have gone beyond hatred, into a void where only vengeance existed; his flat voice evocative more by its lack of emotion than from any trace of feeling woven through it.

"Every one of those animals was a powerful Sith, and yet their power in the Force could not harm my daughter. It is her birthright to destroy the Force within others if they attempt to use it against her. Through all that pain and suffering, she had that one small victory over them. Salga knew this; it was the reason he sent his servants. When I confronted him, I learned that this had been his plan all along, his and the stranger's. Izaya was the first, he said, of the legions of Sith who would destroy the powers of his enemies.

"I despised him, hated Nord Salga, Empress Morte, and all the rest of "Sith Lords" who cared for death and bloodshed - whether it be their enemy's or their friend's - more than their empires, their people, or even their own principles. It is why I exiled myself to Republic space, forfeiting my right as Salga's successor. The only thing I wanted was to keep Izaya safe."

Izayus blinked another tear from his eyes, clenched his fists in fury. "I couldn't. Using what witchery I know not, he found us again and stole Izaya's first child; the child born of Salga's treachery."

In that moment, Calum hated himself for this man's sake. He wished to hear no more of the horrors attributed to the name of the Sith - the name he had inherited - but he could not summon his voice so much as to even offer what cold, empty comfort he could to Izayus. Nothing he could possibly say would soothe the wounds.

Calum stole a glance at Juhani. Tears were streaming down her elegant face. Calum hated himself for not having such sensitivity; he felt like a fraud enshrouded in meaningless feelings he could not express. Why did he feel so cold, so unfeeling, when his heart wanted to scream in anguish at such an injustice?

He felt trapped inside the shell of Revan.

"This has been the story of the last two hundred years, Revan," Izayus said. "Over and over the Sith have used my daughter for their own purposes. They give her children to be born with her gift - her curse - and take them from her when she gives birth. It does not matter what I may try to do to keep them away from her; eventually they find her and begin the cycle again.

"Her bastard offspring quickly became a clan, and after Salga and Morte's empire was crushed by the Lords' Alliance, after the entire old Sith domain dissolved, the monsters who so contemptuously call themselves "Clan Izaya" took up where their predecessors left off, and torment my daughter to this day. Aliid, here," he gestured to the silent, fingerless man at his side, "has been the one light of hope for my daughter's happiness."

"I'm sorry," was all Calum could force from his throat. Beside him, Juhani sniffled quietly, doing her best to mask her own distress from him.

He wanted to vomit at what he'd heard, and yet, he felt a strange calm gradually taking over. It was the calm of one who knew he was irrevocably committed to a single, terrible course and prepared to carry through with every ounce of his strength and willpower; a person willing to throw himself, body and soul, into the flames he could not see.

"What would you ask of me, Master Izayus?"

The Sith met Calum's eyes, his own blazing anew with a yearning for vengeance--not for himself, but for his daughter.

"I would ask you to destroy Clan Izaya from the face of the galaxy."

--------------------------------

_"Power beyond containing, are you going to remain a slave for the rest of your life? Give in to the night."_

**End Part 4**

**

* * *

Disclaimer:** The song quotes are taken from the Disturbed song 'The Night' and is the property of David Draiman, not me.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part 5**

_"Lost in the night, wandering alone. Try as I might to escape the fight it never lets me go."_

--------------------------------

"I can't." As the words floated into the silence and Izayus' face darkened in anger, Calum realized to his horror that he'd said it out loud.

But then, he'd meant it. After hearing of such atrocities attributed to the name of the Sith, and knowing what crimes he was already guilty of, Calum didn't want in any way to return to being what he knew he was; Darth Revan, Lord of the Sith. Izayus was asking him to commit genocide, and he simply couldn't do it. He wouldn't become that sort of animal again. The resolve he had felt for an instant was gone, obliterated by a wave of self-loathing.

_Stop thinking about yourself for just a moment! You have to consider the whole issue at hand, not just yourself._

I won't become a monster again! Calum screamed at the voice in his head.

_You need this man. He has Bastila, he has knowledge you need. You cannot reject this chance!_

"So your honor is nothing but a lie," Izayus spat contemptuously. "You are no better than the pathetic neo-Sith you cultivated, Revan."

He stood. "Your coming was foretold by prophecy, you would be one who saw reason within the Sith. And yet here you are, lacking even the resolve to uphold your own agreement."

"You're wrong," Calum retorted. "I'm no Sith'ari! Prophecy be cursed."

"Sith'ari?" Izayus spoke the word with incredulity. "There is no Sith'ari. The Sith'ari is a myth. What? Have you been listening to the babbling of your own neo-Sith? You are the one named in a static prophecy a thousand years old. You are a true prophet, able to see the branches where everyone else sees only the tree."

_The prophecy! Branches; unexpected outcomes!_

Calum couldn't think for a moment as he tried to disseminate in his mind the things the Sith had said. Revan recognized their relevance, even if he didn't.

"You claim to care for this Bastila," Izayus growled, cutting off Calum's concentration. "Her life now enters the price, Revan. I have spent two hundred years watching my daughter suffer at the hands of my old Lord Sith and now her own children. If you will not end her tormentors, your wife will be returned to you lifeless."

Calum and Juhani both shot to their feet and drew their lightsabres in a flash. Fear boiled over into anger; he would not let this happen! He'd promised Bastila he'd get her out of this. No Sith from the old empire would destroy them, he'd kill Izayus if he had to in order to keep her safe. Calum didn't know if there was any length to which he wouldn't go to save her life. He'd been off the deep end before, and felt as if he was headed there again--for her.

Izayus stood unmoved by their show of force. A single red blade ignited in his hands.

"This confrontation would be truly useless, Revan," he said calmly. "You know that. You may think you command greater powers than I, but I have something you do not: experience. I have been doing this for centuries. Do you really think either of you can best me? It will do you no good, regardless. Bastila will die whether or not you kill me."

Calum was in a rage now, Izayus was an enemy in his eyes. He was ready to strike if the opportunity presented itself. But from beneath the veil where he waited always, Darth Revan knew the truth of what the Sith had said; fighting him would indeed serve no purpose. Calum had no realistic idea of the power Izayus wielded, nor the resources at his command. Every bone in his body wanted to fight, but his inner voice told him this was not the way to do so.

Even so, Calum was committed. He would do whatever it took to get Bastila back. In this, he and Revan were in agreement.

But there was yet another reason. Revan continued prodding, trying to get him to notice some obscure detail he had missed, something important.

"The masked stranger you spoke of," Calum - or was it Revan? - said. "Where did she come from?"

"I told you; from beyond the galaxy. An inviolate domain where the Force has died," Izayus answered. "You came to me before asking this question, because you knew I had come into possession of a key you would need to unlock this deadly domain."

Calum suddenly felt a spark of understanding. It was the white horde.

"That was your original price, Revan. The destruction of Clan Izaya for the secret to breach the barrier. Accept this agreement and prove me wrong about your honor, or you forfeit Bastila's life."

_The barrier! The key! The white horde have hid themselves behind a wall of death. Find the Key! The balance is everything!_

The green blade extinguished itself. He opened his had toward Izayus.

"I accept."

Izayus deactivated his red blade and clasped the offered hand. "Truth, honor, respect," he intoned. His eyes took on a sudden intensity. "Never forget this, Revan, it is everything we stand for."

Revan nodded. "I have no excuses for myself. I know you are right, and I accept the truth. The agreement shall be as stated."

He felt commitment burning through him once again. For Bastila, for himself, and for the safety of the galaxy, he had to do this. To destroy a race was a terrible thing, he knew, but justice was a cruel taskmaster, and Clan Izaya had avoided its just fate for long enough. He would do this, not for himself, but to bring a measure of peace to an honorable Sith and his daughter, save Bastila, and find the Key.

Darth Revan lived.

* * *

Bastila yawned in weariness. The night was dragging on. The woman whose room she shared, Izaya, had offered no conversation and Bastila didn't press her. All she'd said was a warning to Bastila not to try to use her powers on her. She didn't need the warning; she'd intuitively deduced that it would be a mistake to ply the Force on one such as Izaya and had said so. All Izaya replied was that she was glad, a statement which puzzled Bastila.

She knew she was a captive, but nothing about her prison made sense. It was a simple house, set among the rolling foothills of some of Dantooine's most stunning mountains. The room was homely, with a large - albeit shielded - window that provided a healthy view of the starry sky and the dark countryside beyond. Her 'captor' was an attractive and very pregnant young woman who kept silent it seemed more out of shame than spite. The only thing that did make sense to Bastila was her lack of a lightsabre, proving that precautions against her escaping had indeed been made.

Izaya had displayed no objections to her wandering about the house, she simply sat in her rocking chair, intermittently dozing and humming quietly while she sewed. Bastila tried all the outer doors, and not to her surprise found them all locked. But escape wasn't foremost on her mind; she still felt a compulsion to help this strange woman, the same as she had before, but she didn't know how. She wanted to understand, because at the moment, she was very confused.

Bastila was growing increasingly drowsy when she heard a door slide open. She whirled at the sound, instinctively reaching for her lightsabre that wasn't there. She started to call upon the Force, but checked herself again, not wanting to make a mistake of unknown consequences should she unleash it at the wrong person. She didn't what to make of Izaya, but knew she definitely did not want to use the Force against her.

She was suddenly greeted by the astonishing sight of a distinguished older man in full dress attire from what military she knew not, followed by a slender man clad in all black and covered in a long mantle and hood. Fingerless hands hung at his sides.

As Bastila gaped in surprise, the older man gallantly bowed. "Perseus Izayus at your service, my lady."

"I am Bastila," she replied, nonplussed.

Izayus slightly bowed his graying head again, nodding. "Yes, I have spoken with your husband. Thanks to you, he and I have reached an agreement."

"Aliid? Aliid, are you here?" Bastila heard Izaya's voice from down the hall in her room. She emerged seconds later.

"I'm here, Jastine," replied the man in black, drawing back his hood to ruffle short brown hair as he caught sight of Izaya. They embraced each other passionately, sharing a long kiss that reminded Bastila of how much she ached to have Calum hold her in his arms again.

During the short time she'd had to tell him she was alright, she'd seen the same desperation on his face, the same monumental fear of losing her as she remembered only too well from painful times past. She didn't know what agreement he'd made with this man Izayus, but she could readily imagine just how far he'd be willing to go if her safety was concerned.

Izaya pulled back from the kiss breathlessly and gazed at Aliid for a moment before entwining her arm with his and retreating back into her room, closing the door after them.

When the two had disappeared behind the bedroom door, Bastila looked back to Izayus, who stood with a distant, sad smile on his face. "It lifts my heart to see her in such spirits. She so rarely is," he said.

"Forgive me for the forwardness, but who _are_ you?" Bastila asked, confusion inevitably bleeding into her voice.

Izayus gestured to a pair of chairs that sat next to a large picture window, the sill decorated by a collection of fragrant green herbs. He waited for Bastila to seat herself before sitting down opposite her. "First and foremost, milady Bastila, I am a father who is very concerned for his daughter." She made no reaction, already having guessed as such. "Please keep that in your mind when I tell you I am Sith."

Bastila resisted the overpowering urge to take to her feet and assume a fighting stance. Every instinct screamed at her to defend herself, but just like all the rest of her baffling circumstances, things weren't as simple as they might seem. The solemn-faced man sitting across from her had straightforwardly admitted that he was a Sith, and yet here he was, in this house, with a daughter he obviously cared for.

He smiled condescendingly. "I understand your confusion. You Jedi know only the neo-Sith, the lust-driven automatons Exar-Kun and Malak threw at you. I am of the old Sith, from a house who understood the founding principles of the Sith empire. Truth, honor, respect."

Bastila never took her eyes off him. "There is no honor amongst the Sith. Respect is but a facade, and truth is discarded the moment it becomes inconvenient. The Sith follow the path of the Dark Side."

"'The Dark Side' is what the Jedi call anything that does not fit into their stringent view of the universe, milady. Bitterness, rage, and resentment towards the Order creates the monsters you call Sith, who are in reality as far from the Sith as are the Jedi. When the old Sith found the Force in themselves, they kept it solely for themselves. To the Jedi this was evil. Why? Because they preached that anyone with the ability must sacrifice to the common good; give up all their possessions, their very life, and forever serve the never-ending pursuit of absolute justice. The Sith of old were branded the despicable servants of evil incarnate for demanding the right to live as they wished. Tell me, then, which is the greater evil?"

The words rolled so easily off Izayus' tongue, Bastila could tell this was a speech that had been sitting inside him for years and years. It sounded familiar to her; not the words but their deeper meaning. It was almost the same reasoning that had led her and Calum to separate themselves from the Jedi.

"No, my lady," Izayus continued, "there once was integrity within the Sith. What you see now of them is madness, created by centuries of war and bloodshed within the old empires. Sith Lords rose and fell, and gradually only those who ruled with the most cruelty, fought with the most brutality, prevailed. The honorable fell, or were deluded with the same madness." Izayus shook his head. "So here I am with my daughter, my precious Jastine Izaya, whose mother was killed by a stranger in a mask."

_A mask!_ Bastila suddenly thought. She remembered the many sleepless nights she'd listened to Calum mumbling in the midst of his nightmares. Masks--the white horde!

A noise caught her attention, and Bastila straightened herself in the surprisingly comfortable chair; she'd been nodding off. She looked up to see the man Aliid departing from Izaya's bedroom.

"She's asleep," he announced in a respectfully low voice, talking to Izayus. The much older man nodded his bearded head. "I'm going to check on the night," Aliid said.

Izayus stood and handed something to Aliid, a prosthetic device. Aliid held out his fingerless stump and wormed his hand into the device, bending the mechanical fingers reflexively. He repeated the process with a second Izayus held out for him. In another moment, he was gone.

Bastila frowned. "Who is he?"

"Aliid was once one of the neo-Sith," Izayus answered casually. "He was a fresh convert eager for greatness when a lone Jedi woman ripped out the heart of the Sith Assassins and he lost faith in what he had thought was his true calling." A wistful look came to his face. "He came upon us by accident, and he has done something I, in two hundred years had never been able to truly do; bring happiness to my daughter."

Bastila smiled at the sentiment, even if she didn't understand all of it. The two were in love with each other, and she knew how desperately right it felt to hold your dearly beloved in your arms. As she fell back asleep, she thought about how much she longed to hold Calum again. It had only been a few hours, but it already felt like an eternity.

* * *

For the seventeen thousand, four hundred forty-eighth time, HK-47's search of the ship turned up nothing threatening. There were absolutely no looters, thieves, bandits, or space pirates within a parsec of the _Ebon Hawk_'s landing pad just outside the Jedi compound on Dantooine, and HK's processor was numbed by the monotony of pulling guard duty over the deserted, unused ship. The only thing that was keeping his directives intact was the fact that even this cruel and insensitive assignment was an assignment from his Master.

During the first few weeks, HK-47 had been kept rather busy repelling a a hungry wave of thieves all eager to get their hands on the ship. Either by poisoning the ship's ventilation systems when they got aboard, gunning them down before they reached it, incinerating them with flamethrowers, blowing them up with grenades, or blasting them to smithereens with the _Hawk_'s laser cannons, HK-47 quickly built a reputation for the ship as 'untouchable' and had been left alone ever since.

Even the vermin were gone by now. Here and there across the floor of the inside cabin were scorch marks where he'd blasted an unfortunate gizka or two into amphibian heaven. The engine room bore a few messy stains from disemboweled mynock corpses.

Conversation with the T3 droid was unstimulating at best. Such minor, unsophisticated droids had no appreciation for the finer points of removing a man's still-living entrails. HK found, more often than not, that the T3 droid would rather run his meaningless diagnostics and pay no attention to his impassioned soliloquies describing the joy of seeing the target's brains splash to the ground.

HK-47 droned a protracted fading note on his vocabulator, just to assure himself it was still functioning properly, and stalked back to the garage to shut down for a cycle.

The ship's sensors woke him early; someone was approaching the cargo ramp.

HK snapped into action, raising his Mandalorian-made heavy ion blaster as he stood ready to blast at anything that might come through. Abruptly, the thought ran through his logic circuits that his booby-traps should have been enough to stop any intruder. He had, after all, had months to formulate his defenses--which, to his immense disappointment, were never tested again.

That meant it was either someone incredibly skilled, incredibly lucky, or someone who knew all his detonation codes. He easily discounted the last possibility. The only one who would know his codes was his Master, the esteemed meatbag Lord Revan.

The cargo ramp swung open, and instead of blasting at the figure it revealed, HK-47 inadvertently overloaded his vocabulator, producing a high-pitched squawk before his fail-safes temporarily disabled the function.

His Master had finally returned.

* * *

A harsh noise suddenly woke Bastila and she jerked upright in her chair. She didn't know how long she'd been dozing but there was still no sign of the sun in the sky outside. For a moment she couldn't find the source of the disturbance, until her eyes found the dark, silhouetted form of Aliid staggering into the house.

Blood was dripping from his mechanical fingers.

Izayus had already leaped to the man's side, but Aliid pushed him away, shaking his head. "I'm fine," he insisted, gripping Izayus' arm in urgency.

"Get Izaya out of here, now!" he ordered the older Sith. "They're coming."

Bastila saw for a moment fear overtaking Izayus' face, replaced in an instant by blind rage. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and he took a step towards her, his demeanor seething with lethal intent. A red lightsabre ignited in his hands.

"It seems Revan has forfeited your life," Izayus growled, raising his blade.

Bastila finally knew how to react to the man; he was just another Sith. In a moment, he had turned himself from a puzzling enigma into a simple threat, and she knew how to respond to threats. As soon as she'd leapt to her feet, she began concentrating her power into the strongest Force shield she could muster around her right hand. Even weaponless, she was not defenseless. She would defend herself with whatever force was necessary.

She didn't understand what had suddenly driven Izayus to his rage, but she would not die for ignorance.

Just as Izayus was about to swing his sabre, and as Bastila was in the process of parrying with her summoned Force shield, a piercing voice stopped them both in their tracks.

"Father, no!" Izaya, having heard Aliid's warning, stood in the threshold of her bedroom door, fixing her father with a pleading gaze. "She has no part in this. Please don't kill her, Father."

"I warned Revan of the consequences!" Izayus roared, thick veins on his neck bulging in his anger. "He has failed once, he knew the price of a second failure!"

"Please don't, Father," Izaya begged, tears on her face. "No one else should die because of me."

Izayus' furious countenance softened, the blind rage melted from his face. "Of course," he whispered, closing his eyes in despair. "It was too late. It's too late for everything."

Bastila breathed a sigh of relief as he deactivated his lightsabre. His demeanor instantly changed to one of heartfelt regret. "Forgive me," he implored. "I have been guilty of false presumption."

Bastila's resolve faltered, she let her Force shield dissipate.

"This is all very touching," Aliid gruffly interrupted, catching their attention once more. "But they are here for her. We have very little time, Master, we must get Izaya out _now_."

"Yes, of course," Izayus agreed. He turned to Izaya, who was wearing an expression of grim acceptance. "The Force be cursed, it is too soon!" Izayus swore. "Aliid, you take her into the hills, hide her. I'm going to kill as many of them as I can."

Aliid nodded. "What about her?" He pointed at Bastila.

Izayus pinched the bridge of his nose in concentration. He let out a sigh. "My own name be cursed, I cannot do this," he whispered to himself. He met Bastila's eyes, concern on his face. "Take her, as well. I believe she will help us."

"Who are these people?" Bastila asked, already feeling she was willing to help. Izayus and his daughter were like no other Sith she'd known.

Izayus shook his head urgently. "There is no time for lengthy explanations. You must leave at once. Hide in the hills and keep Izaya safe!"

Aliid grasped her by the arm and gently but insistently pulled her away, towards the back of the house. Izaya had covered herself with a cloak and a black shawl and followed him closely out the rear door into the chilly night outside.

The back door led them straight into a waiting forest, providing them with cover while also shutting off the cold light of the moon. Izaya had grasped Aliid's hand and whispered to Bastila to hold her own and Aliid led them on by feel through the dark woods. Bastila could see nothing ahead or behind her, and relied completely on Izaya's hand gripping hers and Aliid's sporadic warnings and directions to them both.

They traveled in pitch blackness for how long Bastila knew not. By the time they broke out into the open plains, she recognized the pale moonlit hills before them. She knew where they could hide.

"Aliid," she whispered. The slender, nimble man heard her instantly, turned to the sound of her whisper. She gestured with her hands at a line of hills. "There is a grove to the northwest where we can hide."

Aliid nodded knowingly. "The old ruins. Yes, I remember. That is where I am taking you and Izaya. Quiet now," he admonished her. "Like me, they are excellent seekers of their prey. I have not outsmarted them yet, but we can hope to catch them overconfident."

The three of them crept across the exposed plains, Bastila and Izaya following Aliid's example and staying as low to the ground as they could, using whatever concealment presented itself. Bastila was in familiar territory; she'd spent years among these hills living at the nearby Jedi Academy. For an instant she considered whether they might get Masters Vandar and Vrook to help them, but quickly rejected the idea.

They would immediately recognize Aliid as a former Sith; a situation that would demand an explanation she could not provide.

She was acting purely on her Jedi instincts, and they told her to help Izaya, despite knowing what she did about her father--despite what he'd threatened.

They were entering the outskirts of the ancient grove, as safe ground as could be found. Bastila decided it was time for answers. Again tethered to Izaya's hand as Aliid led them both through the trees completely by feel, Bastila tugged gently to get her attention.

"What is it?" Izaya asked in a voice nearly inaudible.

Bastila kept her own voice cautiously low. "Can you tell me about these people you must hide from?"

There was a pause. The darkness of the grove seemed to thicken with the silence. Bastila, stumbling as she tried to follow a path she couldn't see, wondered if it might not have been better not to ask the question.

She heard Aliid growl softly to himself.

Then Izaya's voice broke the silence, quivering. "They are my children..."

* * *

The _Ebon Hawk_ made a strange noise as Revan pulled back on the pitch controls, eliciting a loud curse from him that made Juhani blush. The ship gave a hard jolt in reply and Revan continued growling as he insistently prodded the cargo freighter from the surface of the landing pad where it had been docked for half a year.

"Suggestion: Master, instead of attempting to shake apart the entire ship, perhaps you should make use of a more competent pilot."

Revan rolled his eyes at HK-47's unhelpful comment. The rusted assassin droid had done just what he asked for the last six months: Keep anyone and everyone away from the _Ebon Hawk_. He had done his job admirably, and perhaps more astonishing, had stayed sane. The droid's intimidating presence was enough to ward off any foolish salvagers who came near.

On the other hand, Revan did wish he had a more competent pilot around, as HK-47 had so snidely suggested. He hadn't bothered to fill the droid in on the changes in personnel on the _Hawk_, most notably in this case the departure of Carth Onasi.

Thinking back, Revan wished the two of them had parted ways on better terms. To be sure, Admiral Onasi was an honorable man, and had agreed to keep his and Bastila's secret, even acknowledging their sacrifices by marrying them on the bridge of his new ship. But after they'd all learned the truth, Onasi had never really been able to accept Calum ever again. He'd fought alongside him in the mission to find the Star Forge and destroy Darth Malak, but whatever trust might have ever existed between the two men was irretrievably lost.

Carth specifically asked him not to make contact with him again after they saw each other last. Revan respected that, but still wished he were around if only so he wouldn't have to be the one to pilot the ship. Carth was up and away a far better pilot than he was.

After the bumpy takeoff, during which a number of lights had come on the console, which he pointedly ignored, Revan was able to smooth out his flight pattern and take to the sky with relative ease, finally comfortable in his amateur flight skills.

He still had no idea where he was going, Izayus had only been able to provide a general area from where he knew the Zayans were coming. Clan Izaya, he'd told him, cloistered on a planet in the Yeven Cluster; a cluster of some eighteen systems. Mentally, Revan went over the list of inhabitable planets within those systems.

Saara was more-or-less inhabitable but dotted with swamps that were toxic to most sentient races. Jyyjen had many fine breweries, but it was favored more by the nobles and politicians, thus casting real doubt on the possibility a Force group could be found there. Parsces and Athet, sister planets, were both thickly inhabited by a variety of races; searching either would be a task that would take years.

Odeth triggered images in his mind. Foggy, indistinct, they were little more than vague notions, but the half-recalled memories made that one planet stick out from the others. He knew the planet Odeth, had been there before as Revan.

He tried to think of everything he remembered about the planet. It was a backwater; a rundown, forgotten heap where once had been thriving colonies, even cities being built. Unfortunately for the last colonization effort, the planet's cyclical climate had changed, as it did every few decades. Lakes dried up, deserts grew, and fresh new wastelands formed all over the planet as much of its moisture was sucked up by its enlarged polar icecaps.

There was something more about the planet, some detail, some noteworthy aspect, that Revan knew he was overlooking. He tried to recall everything he'd heard second-hand about Odeth, either from passing travelers, bar mates, in heated conversation; anything. And then it struck him. Odeth was a mercenary haven; the ghost towns and abandoned cities prime real estate for paralegal and outlaw businessmen. And with its vast wilderness, there was plenty of space for any amount of illegal operations. Perhaps even a Force cult such as Clan Izaya.

It was a place to start.

Breaking free of orbit, Revan made to start setting the hyperspace computer. For a heart-stopping instant, his mind drew a blank, and he panicked.

He had to get to Odeth! For Bastila, for Izayus, for himself; he had to get there! But he couldn't _remember_!

_Stop! Don't think about her, it hurts too much. Focus on the task at hand! Clear your mind and think from the void._

Squeezing the ship's controls reassuringly, Revan took a deep breath and calmly waited a few minutes, letting his suddenly racing heart slow itself down, steadily purging his mind of all thought. He sought the calm center within, the heart of the Force inside him, the void in his mind that allowed him to think and to do without feeling, only need. There was no anger, no rage, no sympathy, no love or compassion, simply bare necessity. Like the eye of a hurricane, that essential null zone without which the fury of the storm could not exist, the calm center within him focused and amplified his will and his power into a single drive.

Serenity through chaos, as was the way of the universe.

A light smile touched Revan's lips as recollection came to him. Within minutes he'd set the hyperdrive, made the jump, and started the journey into that shadowy corner of the galaxy. Odeth was some distance away, a withering fruit on the vine of forgotten trade routes no one used for any legitimate purposes.

An unexpected yawn overtook Revan as his eyelids drooped. His exhaustion was catching up to him rapidly.

"Watch the cockpit, will you HK?" he asked the rust-colored droid. "I'm going to get some sleep."

"Statement: Of course, Master. Observation: Meatbags such as yourself require a certain amount of inactivity; an amount I have noted you often have trouble achieving."

Revan turned to Juhani. "You should go ahead and get some sleep too, Juhani."

She shook her head. "I will stand guard."

"We're completely safe, Juhani. And you need your rest. You're no good to me if you're dead on your feet because you haven't slept in three days."

Crossing her arms, she flashed him a look that seemed to say 'If you say so'.

"Cathar are stronger than humans," she insisted.

Revan smiled. "Get some sleep, Juhani. I could make that an order if it would make you feel better."

Juhani held her scowl, but he could tell she wasn't angry. "Very well, I suppose you are right."

Suppressing another cavernous yawn, Revan pried himself from the pilot's seat, which was already growing dangerously comfortable to his tired limbs. Without even thinking, he shuffled his way to what had once been the men's dormitory. It didn't really matter which anymore, since the _Ebon Hawk_'s old crew had scattered long ago, leaving only him and Juhani. Besides, Juhani would likely just snag a blanket or two and curl up on the floor outside his dorm anyway, huffing at the idea of sleeping on a mattress and more than ten from him.

Revan lay down on his old cot, the one set in the corner farthest from the door, and tossed a few blankets over himself without even bothering to take off his boots. As tired as he was, he didn't fall asleep immediately, laying awake for a few minutes. As he willed the soft mattress to swallow him, he realized how terrible it felt to be alone in bed again. It reminded him of how hopeless he'd felt after Bastila had been captured the first time, by Darth Malak. It had been Mission, of all people, who'd finally convinced him to get some sleep after he spent a solid fifteen hours brooding.

He wanted Bastila very badly, but the time for hopelessness was past. He would get rest, and then would come the time for fighting.

--------------------------------

**End Part 5**

**

* * *

**The song quote is taken from the Symphony X song "Revelation" and is the property of Sir Russel Allen and Michael Romeo.


	6. Chapter 6

**Part 6**

_"I won't make the greatest sacrifice. You can't predict where the outcome lies. You'll never take me alive--I'm alive!"_

--------------------------------

The grove ruins, ominous in full daylight, were absolutely menacing under nothing but the cold light of the moon and stars. Broken columns and barely-recognizable palisades surrounding the small crumbling shrine in the center of a tiny clearing among the enclosing trees had a ghostly aura about them, making the scattered stone and tenaciously-standing structures seem alive with an otherworldly presence.

Kath hounds and other wildlife avoided the place, as would Bastila under any normal circumstances. But from what she now knew about the men out on the plains searching for Izaya, Bastila realized that there was no place she might not be driven to if it would mean escape.

The ruins were deep inside the ancient grove, a thick, confusing, and almost impassable sanctuary forest. The shrine within was near impossible to find without first knowing how; the only reason Bastila had suggested it.

Had she the choice, she would not have stayed very long in the desolate place. For Izaya, however, Aliid intended to take every precaution and as much time as he thought would ensure her safety.

After he'd started a tiny campfire - which he shielded against the wall to keep the light down - and made Izaya as comfortable as he could, Aliid started off on an unending patrol of the ruins' perimeter, not wanting to be caught off-guard for even a second. He had shucked his outer cloak, laying it over Izaya to help keep her warm and ostensibly to increase his mobility in the thick entwining branches of the surrounding trees. Observing him leave, Bastila hadn't been able to keep sight of him more than a few seconds after he stepped beyond the crumbling walls and into the dark embrace of the forest, so complete was his stealth.

From what Izaya had told her about the beasts hunting her, she only hoped Aliid was up to the task. For his part, he took to it with a vigorous determination.

As the pregnant woman slept intermittently, Bastila, nerve-frayingly awake, absently poked at the small fire with a stick, trying to occupy her mind and keep it from the horrors she'd learned from the Sith woman. Abruptly, she remembered something that made her smile wistfully.

Izaya's eyes cracked open. Wearily, she propped her head up on a hand and stared at Bastila. "You are still awake?" she asked.

Bastila nodded silently, her own gaze enraptured by the slowly smoldering end of her stick.

"Izaya, who is Aliid? You love him, don't you?"

A smile of her own came to Izaya's face. "Yes, I love him, and he loves me. He is the first one who ever touched me wanting to help." The smile left her face. "Bastila, I have told you that I destroy the Force within anyone who touches me with it, but that is not entirely true. It is partially true, in that there is a part of that person that is destroyed and they are no longer able to call upon the Force. But another part of them is embedded within me. For most who have touched me, this is a terrible connection to have, and it is the reason my father has in the past gone to such great lengths to kill anyone who does.

"With Aliid it is different. He found me shortly after those beasts were finished having their way with me, and in such compassion as I rarely see, immediately tried to help me. I tried to warn him not to, but the first thing he tried to do was calm me with the Force; a mistake. I was surprised by the feelings I felt through that connection, and I begged father not to kill him when he finally found me.

"Months later, when they returned to take my child, Aliid found me again, and he tried to stop them. Bless his soul, he did everything he could but it was not enough. They were too strong for him. Before they left us, they beat him, cut off his fingers, and left him at my feet."

Izaya paused, fixing Bastila with a look of helpless longing that was mirrored in her own heart. "Do you see? It was my turn to care for him, to show him the same kindness he had tried to show to me. That first time, he realized that he could not help me with his powers, so he instead tried to protect me from them." Tears filled her eyes. "He is the only man I have ever known who would do such a thing for me, and by the Force, I won't lose him."

To see such love and compassion existing amongst the Sith sent shock waves of shame through Bastila. She remembered all too well the ignorant, self-righteous judgments of any and all Sith she'd once fanatically clung to. How cruel and insensitive they seemed when confronted with the truth as she had come to know it.

To know such Sith as Izayus, Aliid, and Izaya existed gave Bastila hope. Hope that Calum would ever come to accept the truth of who and what he ultimately was; Sith.

* * *

A terrifying sense of wrongness woke Bastila.

The small campfire had burned down to little more than a few contentedly smoldering embers within the tiny rock-rimmed enclosure. Dawn had broken over the horizon, the few weak rays of sunlight providing only a murky half-light within the thick forest. Dewdrops collected over everything in the chill of the night gave the early morning air a crisp dampness that made Bastila's robes cling to her skin.

She sat up quietly and concentrated her attention on the woods surrounding her, trying to determine what had so unsettled her.

Again she heard it. A faint sound of movement, something straining against another, and then heavy breathing, all muffled by the carpet of dead leaves on the ground and the encompassing foliage of the trees.

Suddenly, a mortal scream cut the still dawn air, instantly waking the sleeping Izaya. It was abruptly choked off, and a clipped gurgle drifted through the branches back to them.

It could have meant either one of two things, one good, one bad, but Bastila did not want to have to wait to find out. She desperately began scanning the immediate area for something, _anything_ that she could use as a weapon to defend herself and Izaya if need be. Rifling through the underbrush around the broken walls, she found only dead, rotting sticks and a profusion of ivy growing over the decaying stone.

More sounds reached her ears, more struggle. It grew increasingly distinct, as if it were coming closer, which Bastila had no doubt it was. She could make out individual cries of pain, grunts of exertion, blows being exchanged. She searched faster, trying to find a club, a gouge, a weapon of any kind. A thought finally occurred to her and she ripped off a few lengths of ivy.

She had started fashioning a makeshift garroting wire when a particularly painful grunt caught her attention. She heard something whistling through the air, land on the ground beside her. Her instinctual reaction was to expect a grenade, but it was nothing of the sort.

Bastila stared in mute shock at Aliid's prosthetic hand device lying broken on the ground.

Izaya screamed as three huge men suddenly emerged from the dark brush. They were mountainous hulks of men, with shoulders as broad as a Wookiee's and arms that seemed as thick around as Bastila's waist. In one massive fist, one of them held Aliid - bound at his wrists - by the neck and cast him to the ground on top of the remains of the campfire, where he screamed in pain as the hot coals seared his back. Izaya screamed again. The three men, each with long black hair, dark green eyes, and cruelly handsome faces, grinned in twisted lust at the sight of her terror.

Before she could react, one of the men grabbed Bastila by the hair, jerked her toward his face as if he were examining something as trivial as a melon at a produce stand. Her scalp stinging, Bastila could see only watery visions through the sudden agony.

The man pawed at her with a meaty hand before dropping to the ground, where she collapsed like a rag doll, trying to think through the pain. "An unexpected blessing, brethren," the man said, eying her lecherously. "We can have some entertainment with her while we wait for the mother's child."

The other two men hooted and Bastila knew only too well what sort of "entertainment" they had in mind.

"No!" Izaya screamed again. "You want me, take me! But let her go!" she pleaded to no avail.

One of the men grabbed her, hauled her upright by the shoulders and held her tightly in his muscled grip while a second slapped her forcibly with the back of his huge hand. She recoiled from the blow with blood running from her nose.

In the grip of an uncontrollable rage, his body pumping full of adrenaline, Aliid leaped up from the ground, wrapped his bound hands over the second man's neck and bit into his scalp with his teeth, trying to drag the man to the ground. Growling more in anger than pain, the monstrous man drove a massive elbow into Aliid's midsection, but the fingerless assassin tenaciously clung onto his choke hold as he managed to gnaw off a patch of his assailant's hair, eliciting a howl of pain.

A fist to the back of Aliid's head by the third man, the one who'd grabbed Bastila, knocked the wiry man out cold and he slid to the ground like a boned tach.

Two of the men started tearing viciously at Izaya's clothes while the third leaned a gigantic knee down on Bastila's stomach.

Bastila cast her eyes about desperately for something she could use to her advantage, even as purple spots began clouding her vision. Suddenly, her eye caught the glint of metal among the folds of Aliid's tunic. Her lightsabre!

She felt the man's weight on her stomach shift as he bent down to grope her and she seized the chance, driving her fist into his groin with all the force she could muster. He howled in sudden agony, his hold on her slipped, and for a brief moment she was free.

With every ounce of strength she possessed, Bastila lunged forward, going for Aliid's unconscious body, stretching her hand out and grasping for her lightsabre with a thin tendril of Force energy. Responding obediently, the double-hilted lightsabre flew toward her, rapidly closing the distance to her outstretched hand.

Suddenly, Bastila was cut down from behind. The weapon missed her waiting hand as the third man grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her face down into the ground. Her head rung loudly from the hard impact as Bastila felt herself pummeled by the man's huge fists. A tooth broke, she spat it out, getting a mouthful of dirt in the process.

She refused to accept what was happening. There had to be something she could do! The pessimistic part of her mind told her to stop struggling, that it would only get her hurt even more, that it would be better to endure whatever might come as a true Jedi should. But the other part of her mind, the part that wanted someday to return to her and Calum's wilderness home and live in peace, told her to fight with everything she had, in spite of her hopeless predicament.

Every time she had an opening, Bastila hit back; threw a fist, an elbow, a knee, a forehead. Everything she did seemed only to amuse her attacker, but still she kept at it, refusing to give in. Izaya's screams continued ringing in her ears as she battled desperately, the sounds permeating the fresh morning air with the frightful odor of despair, horror, and helpless suffering.

Seeming to have grown bored of battering her, the man on top of Bastila started was starting to rip at her clothes when the most astonishing thing happened.

The point of a green lightsabre suddenly burst through his forehead.

As his hulking frame suddenly fell like a ton of liquid duracrete on Bastila, she saw the most surprising of people hurriedly drag the heavy corpse from off her.

It was Master Vrook.

Shocked beyond belief, Bastila could only stare. He said nothing, just acknowledged her with a quick nod and handed her the familiar hilt of her lightsabre and she instantly knew exactly what to do. Painfully, she got to her feet and ignited the twin amber blades.

Instantly, the two armed Jedi caught the attention of the other men, who were viciously slapping Izaya as they held her down. Rising from their task, they both produced crimson sabres of their own and charged the Jedi in their midst.

Bastila went straight for the heart of her foe, abandoning everything in her Jedi training that demanded death only as a last resort; she wanted this man's blood. Her anger grew when he turned aside her blow, his skill an irritating obstacle to his death. Her rage was ice cold, she craved this monster's death with every fiber of her being.

Ultimately, she was not to be denied as she slid around his brutal counterattack and rammed her lightsabre up to its hilt in his stomach. To see the look on the animal's face as he realized, sickeningly too late, that his own mortality was a reality, was exhilarating. Bastila rejoiced as breath left his body with irrevocable finality.

She was standing over the dead body, panting while she tried to calm herself down, as she noted Vrook cutting off the arm of his opponent and ending the threat with a broad swipe across the beast's chest. Only gradually did she come to the realization that it was over. Izaya's cries had lessened to steady weeping, Aliid was stirring on the ground as he regained consciousness, the mechanical fingers still on one hand flexed experimentally as he groaned in pain.

Only after a long moment had passed did Bastila finally begin to move again. She clipped her lightsabre to her belt and bent down to help Aliid to his feet, wincing from the aching pain in her own body as she did so. Vrook had still said nothing to her; he was crouched over Izaya, laying his brown cloak over her nearly-naked body. Aliid was instantly by her side, holding her to his chest as she wept on his shoulder.

"Why?" was all Bastila could think to say to Vrook. She couldn't understand the Jedi Master's actions, had thought he'd abandoned her as a traitor to the Order.

"Vandar and I sensed a disturbance in the Force deep into the night," Vrook answered tonelessly, still not looking at her. "There were Sith on Dantooine, and their presence could not be permitted."

For a while, Bastila thought he would leave it at that, but then he spoke again, this time with a trace of remorse in his gravelly voice. "Sometimes, Padawan Bastila," he said, "prophecy outwits us, makes us think we are smart enough to avoid the disasters we see in its pages, and drives its sword into us while our backs are turned."

Bastila understood. Vrook didn't apologize; she doubted whether he even knew how. This was as close as he could come to saying he was sorry, that he'd been wrong. She wanted to cry with relief that he was, after all, still the wise Master she'd thought him to be.

Suddenly, Izaya gave another cry. Its unexpected sharpness struck a nerve, elicited a unique empathy in her that Bastila was at a loss to explain.

"What's wrong, Jastine?" Aliid asked, trying his best to comfort her.

Izaya gritted her teeth, drew a hissing breath as she shut her tear-streaked eyes in effort. "The child is coming," she finally wheezed.

Aliid looked helplessly up at Bastila and Vrook.

"We'll take her to the academy," Vrook assured him. "This is no place to deliver a child."

* * *

Odeth - its surface lacking the faintest vestige of green, only pale blue, slate gray, dull brown, and ashen white - was one of the singular most inhospitable planets Revan had ever visited. On account of its periodically shifting planetary climate, its population of indigenous species was one of the smallest in its part of the galaxy.

After the last failed colonization effort, ghost towns and half-finished cities were all Odeth had to offer in terms of civilization. A great many of them had been taken over by smugglers, mercenaries, and just about every other sort of criminal, cutthroat, and scum one could imagine. The only facility in the former colony that was still maintained to any sort of competency was the star port. It was Republic regulation to keep the star port operating and functional, but the miserable crews stranded on Odeth were invariably bought and sold within weeks of their assignment, and could be counted on to be just as corrupt as any other scumbag to be found on Odeth.

Revan could almost smell the alcohol on the breath of the dock officer over the comm as he first requested, then badgered and threatened the man into letting him land.

As he was bringing the ship into low orbit, something on the _Hawk_'s sensor grid caught his eye.

"Now isn't that odd, HK," he casually remarked to the assassin droid who had planted himself firmly in the co-pilot's seat, despite the fact that Revan had unilaterally refused to allow him to help fly the ship.

"Statement: Please be specific, master, as to what you are referring, so I may render my input if required to do so."

Juhani leaned forward over his shoulder as he pointed to the monitor where was displayed a large energy signature.

"A Sith ship," Revan pronounced. He gestured to another readout. "Destroyer by the looks and size of it."

"What do you think it means?" Juhani asked.

Revan furrowed his brow. "I'm not sure yet. But I intend to find out."

Several minutes later, and after a harrying experience trying to land the bulky freighter, the _Ebon Hawk_ touched down at what had to be the most dilapidated excuse for a dock he'd ever seen. The rough pad - which, thankfully, was a sturdy structure - was covered in rust and stains from every sort of engine fluid, fuel, and grease imaginable. A stagnant breeze brought the acrid smell of xerylthol diesel exhaust from a third-rate generator to Revan's nose.

Carefully controlling his demeanor, Revan strode confidently from the open cargo ramp, trailed by Juhani and HK-47, and casually paid off the dock officer with a pile of credit chips. Once the money had been forked over, the man was only too happy to take care of the ship while they went about their business. Another few credits bought Revan expert directions from the obviously juma-addicted Republic employee.

Revan chose his objectives carefully. He was primarily searching for leads, having nothing besides his jarred memory of this particular planet as being a probable location of Clan Izaya. And he knew a thing or two about places like this, where the law was nonexistent and vice was the currency of the realm, chief among them being that where there was booze, there was sure to be information if one knew how to go about asking. Therefore, his first destination was the local cantina.

The seedy establishment he soon found himself in made him thankful he had decided not to let himself and Juhani traipse around in their simple Jedi robes. Among such filth and brusqueness they would have stood out like flashing beacons. Even as they were, attired in matching sets of Echani fiber armor covered lightly with gray cloaks, he and Juhani still looked a little out of place for not being dirty enough.

Revan sat down on a vacant seat at the bar and slapped some credits chips - a substantial amount - on the counter. The tender, a scraggly hulk of a man, raised his bushy eyebrow at the money and, without making eye contact, asked, "What'll it be?"

"Juma, straight from the bottle," he requested.

The bartender huffed. "You sure? I could put a couple girls under you for this much."

The counter-top suddenly received a few new scratches from Juhani's claws.

"When I want a prostitute," Revan said icily, "I will inform you. Just the drink, please, or instead of credits you will be receiving severe head trauma."

With a look of indifference, the man shuffled off to take care of the rest of his clientèle and fetch the juma. Revan surreptitiously scanned the dimly-lit establishment, looking for familiar faces or anything else that might jog his memory. Nothing did. The faces meant nothing to him.

The bartender had brought his drink and he'd taken several sparing swallows when Juhani slightly nudged Revan's shoulder, catching his attention.

"What is it?" he whispered.

The Cathar gestured and Revan turned his eyes but not his head toward where she pointed. He saw a man sitting at a table in a far corner of the cantina, watching him.

"Well," he said, "it looks as if we might have a candidate for confidential informant."

As he started to get up, Juhani made to follow him.

"No, you stay here. I'll go alone."

"I am going with you," she insisted.

Revan shook his head. "I'll be better able to catch him by surprise if I'm alone. No, you stay here and guard my drink." He shrugged at her. "Chat with HK or acquire a taste for juma while I'm gone. Force knows you could use a distraction every once in a while, Juhani."

She scowled magnificently at his suggestion, but stayed put while he melted in with the rest of the cantina's customers, using the crowds to his advantage as he slowly advanced toward the silent observer. He turned his hood up to cover his face while he stalked, making like the rest of the people and keeping his eyes away from faces, his body language stiff and defensive as if he expected an attack to come out of nowhere at any instant. Even if his clothes were too clean to fit in perfectly with his surroundings, his manner more than made up for whatever conspicuousness he might otherwise have radiated.

The stranger was taken utterly by surprise when suddenly Revan's gloved hand seized his neatly-cut hair from behind and held the cold emitter of his lightsabre to his neck.

"Looking for me?" Revan growled into the observer's ear.

"It _is_ you!" the stranger exclaimed in a whisper.

"And who would that be?"

"Lord Revan, forgive me. We all thought you long dead."

"Well, obviously that's not the case." Revan withdrew his hand and pulled a chair out for himself, sitting down beside the man.

Up close, he was able to get a better look at the stranger. The man nervously ran a hand through his disarranged mid-length brown hair. The hair framed a face that was both ordinary and elusively ethnic. Attentive blue eyes shone beneath a level brow and blunt forehead, his chin displayed the slightest hint of a graying beard.

"So," Revan began, wracking his mind in an effort to dredge up recollection, "what are you doing here?"

The stranger took a brief drag from his drink before answering. "When you were... killed, Malak's ascendancy brought about a greater rift than most people realize. Few people outside the Sith know what sort of Darth you were, Lord Revan, and so cannot understand why so many of us would feel such loyalty to you. There were a number of us who refused to serve under the new Darth and there was mutiny among the Sith ranks. At first, Malak was obsessed with crushing us under his heel, until, as they so often did, his priorities underwent a massive shift. Once the Jedi and their Battle Meditation had begun posing serious problems to his conquest of the galaxy, he forgot about those of us who escaped."

The man gestured. "Eventually, I hid _Righteous Judgment_ and her crew here, out of the line of fire and under the Republic's nose."

Something in Revan's mind finally clicked. He suppressed the urge to shoot to his feet in surprise. "Jalek! Admiral Lorn Jalek!"

The man smiled. "So you do remember me. You were always good to those who served you well."

"Jalek, the war is over. Malak's dead."

Jalek nodded. "Yes, I know. But I have... other commitments, that keep me and the others here."

Revan leaned closer, sensing he had come to the right person. "Admiral, the reason I am here is I am in search of a renegade Force group, a bastion that has too long escaped my notice. I have reason to believe they may have been hiding on this planet, as you have been doing."

"Tell me how I may assist, Lord Revan."

"They call themselves Clan Izaya."

At the mention of the name, Jalek's expression darkened with distaste. In deliberate slowness, he set his drink down on the table. "Beasts!" he swore. "By the word of truth and honor, such abomination has no place among true Sith." He fixed Revan with an unreadable expression. "You were right never to employ their services."

"You know of them, then?"

Jalek glowered, his face confirming the question. "They are here, Revan. Every few weeks, one will show his face around here and pay outlandish sums for whores, which are never seen or heard from again. I don't know what they do in their remote sanctuary, but it is nothing you would ever have permitted. Forgive me for questioning you, but why in the name of the Axia do you wish to find them?"

Revan turned his face away, leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms as for a moment he was filled with a nearly-intolerable longing. Bastila's absence was like a hole in his heart, their separation a burden that threatened constantly to drag him down into the horrors of self-loathing and misplaced guilt.

The moment passed and Revan spoke to his once-loyal subordinate. "I need to destroy them."

"Truth, honor, respect." Jalek clapped a hand over his heart. "By your word, Lord Revan."

'Return to your ship and tell your men that your Lord Revan has returned," Revan ordered. "And then make ready for flight. I am going to need that ship."

At the command, Jalek's face paled and his demeanor changed entirely, fear taking predominance.

"Lord Revan, there is much you don't know," he protested, making it clear by his tone and his manner that the last thing he wanted to be doing was challenging his orders. "My men and I have all sworn allegiance to a new Sith."

Revan frowned in displeasure. Jalek wrung his hands anxiously.

"A Sith Empress rose up in your absence, Lord Revan. It was she who offered us escape from Malak's notice here, on this planet, if we were to swear allegiance to her rule. She commands the Three Axia, and demands that my ship and my crew remain here."

"Then it seems I must deal with this upstart," Revan hissed, angered by the obstruction of his mission. "In the meantime, you will carry out my orders and ready your ship, _Commander_ Jalek."

Perspiring, Jalek bowed his head, accepting the rebuke. "Yes, my lord, I will do as you command."

As the man hurried off, Revan walked back over to Juhani and HK-47 at the bar. The Cathar visibly relaxed when she saw him approach; she'd been eying his juma bottle with suspicious glares and hissing intermittently in annoyance at the abrasive assassin droid she had for company. Revan tossed a few credit chips on the counter and snagged the bottle, bidding the pair to come.

As much for his own benefit as for hers, Revan forced a smile. "I didn't manage to get myself killed, now did I?"

She scoffed at his humor. "It is not your safety I am worried about. It is the safety of your wedding vow that concerns me."

Revan scowled at her own attempt at humor but didn't retort. There was already too much on his mind.

* * *

He was stowing the Echani armor back in its locker when Calum saw it again for the first time in six months. Still it engendered the same apprehension, the same vague loathing as it had the last time. He wasn't quite sure why he had kept it even after all this time, knowing the kinds of things it brought out in him, what it ultimately represented.

Still, he supposed, he was again Darth Revan. He should at least look the part.

Cautiously, reverently, as if he expected it to at any time lurch back and bite him, Calum lifted his old burnished red armor from the storage locker. More than anything else in recent days, it brought back memories, some recent, some not so much. He liked none of them, but bore them stoically, protected from the horror by a shield of necessity.

The heavy red plates still fit him like a glove, the dark folds of the mantle enveloped him like the illicit embrace of a secret lover. It was disturbing, yet comforting at the same time.

He had come home at last.

And as for the last piece of his horrible symbolism, he resolved to destroy it. But not yet. He still had need of it. Resolutely, Revan pulled it over over his face.

The Mask of Soulreaper had one last hand to play.

--------------------------------

**End Part 6**

**

* * *

**The song quote is taken from the Disturbed song "I'm Alive" and is the property of David Draiman.


	7. Chapter 7

**Part 7**

_"This is who we are."_

--------------------------------

The man's body hit the floor hard with a hard thud of flesh and bone jarring against solid durasteel tiles. The two burly Sith guards each gave him an extra shove to make sure he had no ideas about rising to his feet. At a nod from the head of their lord, they backed out of the tiny cell and activated the force shield over the door, locking in the prisoner.

Darth Revan stood passively by, inscrutable behind his mask to the subordinates doing his bidding. Many thoughts burned in his mind, but mercy was not one of them. He stared through the forcefield at the man he'd imprisoned, totally unfeeling, and commanded the two guards to leave.

As they silently shuffled out of earshot, Revan leaned up close to the cell door.

"This is the only way I can protect you, Jalek," he said.

Painfully, the commander struggled to his feet. Revan had made sure his arrest was both very public and very authoritative, and the guards on hand had given Jalek a beating in keeping with the stringent Sith military doctrine; it had been very painful.

"I know, Lord Revan," replied Lorn Jalek, commander of the destroyer _Righteous Judgment_.

"When I leave, you will be reinstated to command of this vessel, as my suspicions will have been proven unfounded, and the crew is to continue following your orders," Revan explained to the loyal subordinate whom he had imprisoned.

"I understand. Do what you must with my ship, for it is yours to command. It is I who made the pact with the Empress, and she expects me to abide by her wishes."

"That is why I want you out of the picture, Jalek. But you are too valuable to waste, and more importantly, the Sith need to know that their Lord Darth has returned, and that he is not Malak."

The officer grinned, his smoothly weathered face displaying both intelligence and rationale. "Every Sith, no matter his stature or rank, knew the difference between you and Malak, Lord Revan. The Axia welcomes your leadership, should your plan succeed."

"The Empress will have no choice but to come after me," Revan assured him. "And if she will not serve our cause, I will end her."

"As you command, Lord Revan."

Calum Jan would never have had the stomach to do what Revan had just done, use a man who followed him loyally to further his plans. Calum would have recoiled in horror, but Revan was the manipulator and killer Calum could never be. He realized that he'd known this from the beginning, but only now was he truly willing to accept it as part of who he was.

As much as he wished not to know the terror of having to kill and use others to his ends, he could no longer allow that fear to rule him, keep him from what he knew in his heart he must do.

It did not matter to Revan that Jalek had been forced to swear allegiance to a new Sith, he needed the ship regardless. Instead of executing Jalek as Malak surely would have done, he chose to preserve the asset, for the officer had acted only in the best interest of his ship and crew, a trait Revan admired. And his upstaging of the Sith commander would send this mysterious Sith Empress a message, a message that he, Darth Revan, had returned. And in the meantime, Jalek's resources were his to use on his mission for Izayus.

Juhani and HK-47 waited for him outside the cell block.

"Query: Is the prisoner's torture to begin soon? Statement: I would very much like to contribute to the proceedings."

Revan rolled his eyes. "No."

"Disappointed Statement: Oh, Master, you are no fun at all."

"Why must we do this?" Juhani asked as Revan started off down the hall.

"Two things, Juhani," he answered. "First, I need this ship for any number of reasons, not the least of which is finding this rogue Force group." He deliberately avoided using their self-proclaimed name, Clan Izaya, loathing the connection implied. His mind saw them as a completely separate entity, and he intended to keep it that way.

"I may not remember very much from my tenure as Dark Lord Of the Sith, but I remember enough. Lorn Jalek is an old friend and right now I've put him in a very tight spot. A show of arrest and takeover is the only way I can protect him from this upstart Sith Empress who demanded his allegiance."

"But do not Sith have no allegiance but to the one with the most power?"

Revan checked the sabres at his belt, felt the comforting texture of the cold hilts under his hands. "I don't know, Juhani. Not everything is clear to me, either. In the past few days, I've met Sith I never dreamed could exist..." He trailed off.

Juhani seemed content to let the issue be. Revan was grateful for the silence. He shared her confusion, but could not afford to dwell on it; he was the Dark Lord of the Sith and he'd come home at last. No longer was there war within his soul, he was who he was and not one iota more or less.

* * *

The compound was even larger than he'd expected. Aside from one central structure, only a few ramshackle buildings jutted up among what was a small sea of tents. There were easily several hundred individuals encamped in the narrow cul-de-sac canyon. At the opening of the rift in the side of the dead gray mound that was one of Odeth's mountain ranges were parked a few small transport ships, some empty but others brimming with supplies - some no doubt stolen - of every sort to support to the remote encampment.

But it was the not the construction or the logistical support of the compound that repulsed Revan. Nor was it the pervasive coppery odor of blood- and gore-soaked stone, or the racks of bloody instruments outside each and every tent. It was the terrified screams rising above the camp noise that made him sick. As near as he could tell, every one tent in three was occupied, gruesome torture of every obscene variety taking place inside in nearly all of them.

The pain and terror in those screams pricked at his ears, threatening to loose the anger he felt growing inside him. With steely determination he bottled his rage, saving it for the task ahead of him. Occasionally, men gave him glances, but none paid him any mind. Black robes and burnished armor, while not common among the surroundings, were not completely unexpected. He was simply another Sith passing through a hive of Sith.

_Righteous Judgment_'s battle sensors had easily picked up the Zayan compound amid the vast emptiness that covered most of Odeth. Even the slightest vegetation had been swept from the surface of the plains years ago, leaving nothing but dust and stone, neither of which could mask the blithely-parked transports from Revan's notice.

Juhani, HK-47, and a Sith contingent waited some distance away in a shuttle. He had insisted forcefully that he proceed alone. He did this partly because he didn't want to drag Juhani into what had indeed proven a pit of the blackest sin one could imagine. The overriding reason, however, was that it had become intensely personal to him.

For Revan, as far as he was concerned, there was nothing else beyond him and Bastila. Day after day, night after night, she'd loved him despite what they both knew about him. He was the Dark Lord of the Sith and nothing could ever change that, but she loved him regardless. In the same way, he loved her, despite what she'd done to him; her betrayal in a desperate attempt to save herself. The two of them were the same, they each completed the other.

An honorable Sith had asked a fair price of him, to relieve the suffering of his precious child, and in ignorance and unforgivable selfishness he'd refused. Now Bastila's life hung in the balance, teetering on his willingness and ability to become what he'd never wanted to be again and to do only what his heart told him he must.

At his bidding, fierce, righteous anger exploded from the depths of his psyche, inundating him with the pure ecstasy of unrestrained wrath. Anger was the only thing that could protect him here. The Force was no longer an ally, only a hindrance and a danger to him.

Behind the mask that was the personification of his dark nature, Soulreaper rose forth in Revan, preparing him for the trial of blood to come. He counted the shallow steps as he took them up into the main building--twenty-seven in all.

As he had expected, inside the building there was a greater profusion of luxury absent from the rest of the encampment. Soft light from no discernible source bathed the entire complex of interlocking rooms and snaking hallways. The walls were covered in panels of rich gray granite carved all over with strange characters. Soulreaper noted everything as he strode purposefully deeper into the monument to profanity.

He passed a few robed figures, their attire of a much better cut and more well-kept than that of the men he'd seen outside, and they even moved with a threatening grace the others didn't possess. It was clear to him that his suspicions had been correct; this was the place where the most talented and powerful of the Zayan beasts sequestered themselves. It was the eternal pecking order among cutthroats: Those with power take the most for themselves.

Revan stopped. He'd seen enough.

Soulreaper demanded blood.

With hardly a thought, he whipped his lightsabre from his belt and gripped it in steady, determined hands. A red blade ignited, announcing its presence in the still air with a disruptive electric shriek that did not go unnoticed by the building's inhabitants.

A multitude of other red blades rose to challenge his own. Soulreaper laughed at their pathetic show of resistance.

With the force of a flash flood, Revan crashed into the first three. His heart pounded in his ears, adrenaline raced through his body. His opponents seemed to be moving in slow motion; he dodged their seeking blades easily, sliding around their attacks to bury his own sabre in their chests. He spun, ducked, swung again, and heads hit the floor.

More came rushing his way. Soulreaper beckoned to them, promising death, blood.

The movements came to him instinctively; a cut here, a slide beneath the next blade, another upward chop there... Each maneuver led into another like an endless dance, a bloodshed waltz. The hum of his lightsabre in the air was the most beautiful, surreal music to his ears. He no longer even saw the faces of his foes, each one of them simply another body to cut, another neck to sever, another corpse in a long line of corpses-in-waiting.

Soulreaper counted every corpse, keeping a constant tally in his mind. This was not a task to be left unfinished, no one but he would leave this building alive.

On and on he went, the body count rising with nearly each new room discovered. The killing was a seemingly endless task, but Soulreaper demanded nothing less than complete annihilation, allowing him no deviation.

The bodies thinned, each kill growing father apart until Revan realized there were no others. The elite and powerful of Clan Izaya were dead by his hands.

Sagging forward, Revan suddenly felt very tired, exhaustion threatening to sweep over him like a tsunami. His arms could barely hold up his lightsabre, his knees wanted to buckle under him and take him to the floor tiles, it was hard to hold his head straight. The dance with death had drained him.

He was sorely tempted to collapse where he stood, almost uncaring of the deadly consequences of being discovered now. For a moment, nothing seemed to matter anymore. The tide of death he'd brought, no matter how deserved, made him feel like the biggest self-righteous hypocrite who had ever lived. The dead seemed laughing at his foolish justifications, comfortable in their own avarice and depravity while he accused himself for ending their blasphemous existence, delivering the only justice there could be had.

Angrily, Revan brushed aside those thoughts and started walking. He had to keep moving or he surely would drop from his exhaustion. But he first had to escape! Only then could the final judgment of Clan Izaya begin.

As normally as he could considering his fatigue, Revan exited the building of death and entered the main encampment. He hardly saw any of his surroundings as he plodded forward, his eyes focusing alternatively on the mouth of the canyon and the trail at his feet. From the noise, however, he could easily reason that there had been no alarm raised over the sounds of battle in the building. Amid the chaotic expanse of ramshackle huts and tents, screams of terror and pain as constant as the crackle of fires and the bustle of camp dwellers, one more mortal cry or twenty more was no notable occurrence.

Shortly after he made the exit from the canyon, Revan activated his comlink to the _Righteous Judgment_ in the sky several miles away, signaling the interim Sith commander. He still was not as far from the camp as he would have liked, but he reasoned he was not going to be able to get much farther before he finally dropped.

He gave the order.

"Open fire, commander. Burn these abominations from the face of this planet."

In minutes, the sky was filled with a rain of destruction. Fiery red energy bombs screeched down to earth with a howling thunder, splashing the small canyon with inescapable fury. The ground shook from the impacts, the deafening explosions. The roar echoed outwards across the empty expanse of the wilderness, filling Revan's ears as he continued to stagger toward the Sith shuttle now in sight.

He'd done it. Izaya's children would hunt her no more.

Exhaustion overwhelmed him, then. Unable to go any further, Revan fell to his knees on the hard ground, slumped forward in a brief moment of supreme weakness. He reached a hand to the back of his head, undid the clasps on his mask, and held it out before him, pondering.

Silently, the mask stared back at him, the sounds of destruction softening into an ambiance in his head.

Soulreaper had served his purpose. That horrid part of him that needed no justification to kill, the part of him that would act first and think later, the part of him that he let kill Darth Malak, his old friend Aleksie; he was finished with him.

Cocking his arm, Revan threw the mask as far from him as he could, watched it tumble and roll across the sandy wasteland until it rested face down on the lonely plain. Over time, the dusts of Odeth would sweep over and cover it, leaving no trace of its existence on the smooth, unbroken landscape.

The bombardment was winding down when Revan finally dragged himself upright once more and plodded the rest of the distance to the Sith shuttle, where an agitated and concerned Juhani was waiting for him, relieved beyond words to see him.

_I did it, Bastila. I did it for you._

* * *

"What?" Revan tore his attention away from the eclipsed planet they were approaching, he'd missed what Juhani said.

"We are being hailed, Calum," she repeated.

Revan blinked his eyes, fighting sleepiness. The journey back to Dantooine from Odeth seemed like it had taken twice as long, and he hadn't slept in almost thirty-six hours, too anxious to get any meaningful rest.

He'd left the ship _Righteous__ Judgment_ back at Odeth, having reinstated Jalek and given him instructions to contact him when the Sith Empress surfaced to investigate his apparent disobedience. Revan very much wanted to meet this upstart Sith. The more he learned of "the Axia," the more intrigued he became.

But his interest in Sith power games was nothing compared to how much he wanted Bastila back. Even what Izayus had promised him in return for his help - the all-important Key - was almost of no consequence next to his desperate need to hold her, to see her face, to kiss her again. Every second they remained separated gnawed at him, the ache growing more intense the closer he got until it seemed he wouldn't be able to bear it.

But now that he was nearly there, weariness had caught up with him. The beeping on the communications panel had gone completely unnoticed by him. It was times like these when Revan wondered if Cathar actually were stronger than humans. After all, Juhani never slept when he was awake, and rarely slept even he wasn't, yet she remained far more alert than he was.

Considering scouring the ship for a stimulant, Revan answered the hail. A certain unwelcome figure appeared on the holo-projector.

"What do you want, Vrook?" he growled, his crabbiness and plenty of straight anger showing through in his voice.

"Just to talk," the old man answered.

"Go ahead."

"In person," Vrook clarified.

Despite his tiredness, Revan drew back in steely suspicion. "Yes, you would like that, wouldn't you? We already tried that. You betrayed me." The accusation was laid bare, Revan didn't even try to think it had been anything else. "You turned the Republic against me just like you did after the Mandalorian War. I didn't want to kill those men, but you left me no choice. I have no reason to listen to you, Vrook, and even less reason to trust you."

"I am not asking you to trust me, Revan. Only that you accept my offer of a truce for now."

Revan frowned. "What truce?"

"There is a man here, at the Enclave, who has told Vandar and I that you are different. I sensed a restraint in you that suggests perhaps that he is correct," Vrook explained. "If you will not trust me, perhaps you will Bastila."

Revan's hackles raised. "You have her too?"

"We do not 'have' her, Revan, she came to us of her own accord. I promise no harm will come to either of you. If you truly are a different Darth Revan than the galaxy has been led to believe, I would ask you to honor our truce. The Jedi Order is willing to grant you partial forgiveness."

Partial forgiveness. That was more than he had ever expected of the Jedi. If it was true.

Despite his seeming sincerity, Revan was loathe to trust Vrook even this far. He vividly remembered returning from the Outer Rim victorious over the Mandalorians, having raised a fleet and the means to fully protect the people of the Republic from the true threat that loomed over their heads. He had just begun to reinforce several of the outer worlds with fresh troops and new ships, when the propaganda started.

Vicious, deceitful misinformation spread through the Republic holonets like wildfire, feeding rumors and encouraging brazen lies that Revan and Aleksie had fallen to the Dark Side, that they were Sith and conquering the worlds they liberated. The images of cities and worlds ravaged by the Mandalorians were played over again, this time being blamed on Revan's heartless Sith. Entire systems revolted from his protection, turning their militia and other Republic forces against Revan's own.

He'd recognized Vrook's unique hand in the propaganda campaign from years before, when he discovered he and Atris were keeping knowledge of the war itself from the rest of the Jedi Order. Unwilling to give up after having battled so hard, Revan felt himself forced into the role of conqueror because it was the only way.

That was how much Vrook's word meant to him. To say nothing of his involvement in the recent events that saw Revan stripped of his identity and forced to unwittingly undo everything he had accomplished, Vrook's word meant nothing but betrayal.

And yet, doubt fomented in his mind. Revan knew firsthand what it meant to do what seemed wrong for what you knew was right--it was the story of his life. Could he really judge Vrook when he too was guilty of the same crimes? Was clinging to the past more important than moving on with his life?

So many questions he didn't want to answer.

The ship was entering the atmosphere, and Revan was so close to Bastila he could almost feel her presence through the bond. The galaxy could burn for all he cared, as long as he had her back.

"Very well, Vrook," he answered the Jedi Master. "We'll have our truce, for now."

* * *

After a harrowing landing, which was surprising only in that he managed to avoid doing any serious damage to the ship, Revan stepped out into the bright sunlight of high noon. Vrook waited for him just beyond the edge of the landing pad, saying nothing, just silently observing. Though she exited behind him, Juhani quickly cut in front of Revan, her lightsabre dangling at the ready from her wrist. She fixed Vrook with a suspicious glare, which the Jedi Master pointedly ignored.

"We must speak of prophecy, Revan," Vrook said as Revan approached him.

"What is there to discus?" Revan asked, not really in the mood to consider the roads still ahead.

"Vandar thought it best to inform you of its meaning, but he did so without the consent of the Order. You must understand that the fate of the galaxy impinges on this prophecy, Revan, making you the most dangerous person alive."

"So be it."

Vrook sighed in frustration. He matched pace with Revan and spoke as they walked, Juhani always careful to keep herself between the two of them.

"Does it not disturb you, then, that you are the one named to destroy the Jedi Order?" Vrook demanded.

"Of course it does!" Revan snapped, letting all his frustration hang open like a festering wound. "But named or not, that is not who I am. Those are the empty words of a misinterpreted prophecy that you and the Council saw your worst fears in. So you came up with a solution: Annul the Jedi oath to defend those who can't defend themselves. That is not who I am. I did what you could not, and thus your worst fears were confirmed, so I had to be dethroned. Suddenly I was evil for facing what you could not face. But that is not who I am."

"We will have this truce so long as you prove yourself this threat no longer, Revan," Vrook declared.

"I hope you will believe me when I say there's nothing I wish more than to be able to retreat into the wilderness with Bastila and and never trouble myself for the galaxy's sake again," Revan retorted. Then his voice lowered. "But you were right from the beginning; there _is_ a larger threat waiting, Vrook. You and the Council were too afraid to face it, so I have to, for the sake of us all."

No more words were spoken between the two men.

At the entrance to what was left of the Enclave, Revan was surprised to find Izayus waiting. He clasped hands with the older Sith.

"It's done."

Izayus nodded in gratitude. "I thank you. I must confess that when they arrived for her I thought you had again betrayed our agreement. But for Izaya, I might have killed Bastila then and there."

At that statement, even knowing Izayus hadn't, Revan's heart leaped into his throat in sudden, debilitating fear. "What happened?" he asked.

Izayus cast his gaze to the floor as they walked. "I was too late. Never do I exactly know when they will find her, but find her they did, before you had had a chance to fulfill the agreement. Aliid gave me warning and I was only barely able to keep Izaya out of their grasp. Four met their end by my blade, but the others went after her, and I could not protect her.

"It was your Jedi Master Vrook who, in the end, saved her and Bastila. Aliid did all he could, but they were found by the other four who escaped my wrath. He was able to kill one, but three Force-immune monsters such as they would have had no trouble subduing a Jedi."

Revan was not a father, but he knew how it felt to worry for someone you loved and be unable to protect them.

"It pains my heart that your daughter had to suffer this last time, Izayus," he said in heartfelt sincerity.

Fixed by Izayus' rock-solid gaze, Revan stopped. Izayus clapped a rigid fist to his heart. "And that is what makes you and I different from the Sith and Jedi of today, Revan; we _can_ hurt in here."

He pressed something into his hand. Revan looked down and beheld the tiny, red, glowing, tetrahedral form of a holocron.

"Nord Salga fought his war over this," Izayus informed him. "Empress Morte surrendered it to him in her defeat at his hands, and it has since come into my possession. The masked stranger gave him strict orders to destroy it, that in the wrong hands it could undo centuries of her people's hard work." His eyes flashed with satisfaction. "But insurrectionists captured it before the command could be carried out. They brought it to me, thinking I could somehow use it to overthrow Salga. I do not know its purpose, but I do know it is somehow tied to this enigma, and may be the means to unravel the mystery of the white horde."

Revan's eyes shot from the holocron to Izayus' face at the mention of what haunted his dreams so often of late. "You know of the white horde?"

The Sith smiled. "Among other things, it is the purpose of the Axia to know of them."

"Truth, honor, respect," Revan intoned.

Izayus bowed and repeated the incantation. "Long live Darth Revan."

Turning, the old Sith opened a door behind him, held out a beckoning hand to Revan. "Again, I thank you," he said.

Revan stepped into the room. She was the first thing he saw.

Dressed in her tan robes, rich brunette hair pristinely kept in its updo, her breathtaking gray eyes and warm face radiating love and care, Bastila looked about as beautiful as he had ever seen her. More, in fact. It seemed to have been years since he'd gazed on her face. She was sitting next to a pretty young woman with succulent blond hair and a hauntingly beautiful face who lay half-sitting on a cot, cradling an infant in her arms, when she saw him enter.

Revan could hardly restrain himself from running, so badly did he want to put his arms around her. Eagerly, she met his embrace, draping an arm over his neck as she pulled him into a passionate kiss. He moaned helplessly at the warmth of her lips against his, the feel of her alleviating the terrible ache in his heart from when he thought he'd never see her again.

"I love you, Bastila," he whispered.

Bastila nodded. "I have to tell you something, Calum," she said as she pulled away slightly, just to look him in the eye.

"Go ahead," he breathed, reveling in her presence.

She fixed him with a look of such seriousness it almost worried him. "You see, I realized something, Calum. Izayus, his daughter," - she gestured to woman gently rocking the newborn child - "and her companion, Aliid, have opened my eyes to something I would never have thought possible. Because of them, Calum, I can't love you despite who you are anymore."

Revan's throat constricted and his heart pounded painfully in his chest at her statement. He was terrified of what she meant. This couldn't be... not now, not after all this.

But then her sweet smile returned. She touched a hand to his face. "I love you _because_ of who you are, Calum--Revan."

His heart swelled with relief, he kissed her again. Overcome with joy, he wept as he embraced her, hugging her tightly.

"I love you, Revan," she whispered to him. "I love you so much. You let noble Sith flourish."

They spent a golden moment in each other's arms, savoring the contact and incandescence of each other's presence.

Revan wiped a hand across his eyes, composing himself once again.

"I'm not ready," he said.

"Ready for what?"

"To leave for the unknown," Revan answered. "I met an old friend, and may yet find more. If there's anything I've learned, it's that I can't do everything on my own. I can't live without you, Bastila, and I can't fight another war without allies. Izayus has given me a valuable piece of this puzzle, but I still have to gather followers if I am to have any chance to succeed."

"Do you know where we should start?"

He nodded. "Odeth."

Bastila was silent for a moment. She gazed at Izaya and her child and her eyes filled with tears.

"Are we going to have children, Revan?"

Revan gently cradled her head against his shoulder. "Yes. Yes we are."

--------------------------------

**End Part 7**


End file.
